When I use a word . . . . Too much healthcare—uncertainty, underconfidence, and masterly inactivity

Confidence and certaintySome might wonder why underconfidence should feature in a series about too much healthcare. It’s because it’s indissolubly linked to its counterpart, overconfidence,1 both being linked to uncertainty.CertaintyThe IndoEuropean root KREI meant to sieve, discriminate, or distinguish.A Greek derivative, κρίνειν, meant to separate, and the addition of a host of Greek prefixes gives us a range of ways in which secretions derive: apocrine, autocrine, eccrine, etocrine, endocrine, exocrine, holocrine, merocrine, neurocrine, neuroendocrine, and paracrine.In case you think I’ve left out amacrine, that has a different derivation. Amacrine cells are small nerve cells in the inner nuclear layer of the retina, so-called by Ramon y Cajal because, according to Gray’s Anatomy, they have no axis-cylinder process. The derivation is Greek—the cells are simply not (a-) big (macro-).Quinacrine, an acridine derivative named after quinine, also comes from a different root—the Latin word acris, meaning bitter. And mepacrine, from the methyl…
Read Original Article: When I use a word . . . . Too much healthcare—uncertainty, underconfidence, and masterly inactivity »