A Quick Lesson on Medical Terminology with 1980’s Batman

Today, I’m digging back in the archive to 1994 to the Knightquest storyline in order to present a brief lesson about medical terminology. With it’s quasi-Latin and quasi-Greek, medical terms can be confusing and don’t always mean what you expect. Case in point, Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #59. In this comic, physician Shondra Kinsolving has been kidnapped by her evil step-brother so he can use her telepathic powers to kill from a great distance. Understandably, Shondra doesn’t want to be a part of this, so he brother injects her with a drug of his own invention: For those of you who may have difficulties reading the scan, in the key quote, Shondra’s dear brother says: We shall begin with this — a certain drug I developed while we were…out of touch. It’s a hypnotic. It should melt your resistance like ice in a flame. For further emphasis, later in the storyline (issue #61), Bruce Wayne tells Shondra He’s using a a hypnotic drug on you — that’s got to be the answer. After reading these comics, you would think that a hypnotic drug is one that puts its victim into a hypntoized state. This is not an illogical inference. Clearly, that is the author’s understanding of the term. Unfortunately, he’s wrong. The term hypnotic drug (or just hypnotic) is used to refer to drugs that puts patients to sleep (from the Greek god of sleep, Hypnos). Common hypnotic drugs would include benzodiazepines...
Source: Polite Dissent - Category: Family Physicians Authors: Source Type: blogs