90
NOTES AND QUERIES.
s. XL JAN. 31,
technical or professional" Latin term was
caught up by the penny-a-liner, and came
to everybody's eyes and" ears. Apparently
everybody who read or heard of the mys-
terious word rushed at once, not to the Syden-
ham Society's or other medical lexicon, but
to the * New English Dictionary ' for some
account of it, and, not finding it there, wrote
to me to express their disappointment or
indignation indignation being especially
strong on the part of those whose friends or
relatives had oeen victims of the disease,
which, having thus shown that it was not to
be trifled with, ought to have been treated
with respect in the dictionary. I have had
more letters about the omission of appendicitis
than about any word in the language. Per-
haps readers of ' N. & Q.,' who now know the
facts, will abstain from swelling the number.
No dictionary before 1890 contains the word;
it is .wanting even in the ' Century,' 1889.
Words in -itis have come greatly into popu- lar use during the last twenty years. Pre- viously to that I doubt whether any other than bronchitis (invented in 1814) was " under- standed of the people," and even that was often put into more familiar guise as Brown Titus or Brown Typhus as good Englishings as the once fashionable sparrowgrass for asparagus. When a part of the body was inflamed, our mothers were satisfied to call it inflammation of the throat, the ear, the eye, or the bowels; now their children prefer to be professionally assured that they are suffering from laryngitis, otitis, ophthalmitis, or perito- nitis; familiarity with these mysterious names seems to make the disease itself better known, and so, according to the adage, "half-cured." When you can call your malady endocarditis, you have got to the very heart of the matter, and know that that is what it really is. The result is that it becomes doubtful whether we can any longer say that words in -it-is (whether or not English in form; are not English in use ; and it is evident that appen- dicitis, though unknown to English dictiona- ries before 1890, must be included in all dictionaries for the future. But what of all the thousand -itis names for diseases not yet popular? J. A. H. MURRAY.
L, T s ., te ? m was used b ^ Dr - w - O^er at the Philadelphia County Medical Society on 14 December, 1887. See Medical News, 7 January, 1888, p. 26 (quoted in Braithwaite's 'Retrospect of Medicine,' xcvii. 50).
ADRIAN WHEELER.
WATCHHOUSES FOR THE PREVENTION OF BODYSNATCHING (9 th S. x. 448 ; xi. 33). In connexion with MR. MANLEY'S note on the
watchman who formerly guarded the burial-
ground of the Maiden Lane Synagogue, I
may mention that Mr. Abraham Mocatta, of
Mansell Street, Goodman's Fields, in his will,
dated 30 January, 1800 (P.C.C. 132 Adderley),
leaves instructions that his grave should be
watched for twelve months by three men, one
by night [day 1] and two by night, and if at the
end of the year no disturbance of his remains
has taken place, 200Z. is to be divided among
them; but should they fail in their trust the
money is to go to charities. His tomb is in
good preservation, and is in the interesting
burial-ground of the Spanish and Portuguese
Jews in the Mile End Road.
THOMAS COLYER-FERGUSSON. Wombwell Hall, near Gravesend.
In the wall or railing surrounding Ber- mondsey Churchyard are two small polygonal buildings of one floor only. The one nearest the church is partially shown in a print, dated 1804, given in E. T. Clarke's ' Bermondsey,' 1901 ; but these buildings are probably much older. Were they constables' lock-ups for evildoers ; or what was their original use ? ADRIAN WHEELER.
Bermoudsey.
AUTHOR OF LINES WANTED (9 th S. xi. 28). The lines quoted by DR. MURRAY form the eighth and ninth stanzas of John Greenleaf Wnittier's poem 'William Francis Bartlett' (1878). The first line should read- When Earth, as if on evil dreams.
WALTER JERROLD. Hampton-on-Thames.
KURISH GERMAN (9 th S. x. 406). Some of the pronunciations given by MR. ACKERLEY in his interesting note as peculiar to Kur- land are common to many parts of Germany ; the pronunciation of the modified vowels u and o as ih and eh respectively can be heard, for instance, in Saxony, and the letter g is very frequently pronounced soft in such ex- pressions as "heil'ger Mann," "Elgersburg," in various provinces. In fact, there is excellent authority for the soft sound of g in such forns as "heil'ger." Bude, which is given as M.H.G., is N.H.G.; the M.H.G. form is buode. CHARLES BUNDY WILSON.
The State University of Iowa.
" To THE NINES " (9 th S. x. 387, 456 ; xi. 34). The reas9n why I referred to Mr. C. P. G. Scott's article in vol. xxiii. of the Transactions of the American Philological Association is because the treatment of the whole question of "attraction" in English is so full, and the number of quotations is so large. I am quite satisfied with his, explanation, and I think
