RT Journal
A1 Landrey A
T1 LEarning to talk
JF JAMA
JO JAMA
YR 2012
FD July 11
VO 308
IS 2
SP 145
OP 146
DO 10.1001/jama.2012.7435
UL http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jama.2012.7435
AB 
Like Verghese's main character in Cutting for Stone, whose initial encounters with medical words are described above, as a beginning first-year medical student I was fascinated by the utility and beauty of the language of medicine. We started out learning the musculoskeletal system, and I quickly realized that this really was an entirely new language, and not an easy one. I briefly regretted not having studied Latin in high school, yet there were still so many connections to be made to words in English and the romance languages I had studied that it was likely almost as fun. The other women in my study group and I did pirouettes to remember piriformis and gave ourselves headaches demonstrating the two heads of the sternocleidomastoid muscle and the platysmus, which called to mind a platypus tail. The Lachrymose section of Mozart's Requiem sounded in my head as I located the lachrymal duct on our cadaver. I marveled that I would have spent my life not knowing the names of these parts of the body had I not gone into medicine. I felt privileged to be taught such an intimate road map to the bodies all of us are born and die with.