nation to use its own language in scientific treatises, it certainly was
not foreseen that men of science would soon be making discoveries at a
rate which left their skill in words outstripped; that having to invent
their terms as they went along, yet being careless and contemptuous of a
science in which they have no training, they would bombast out our
dictionaries with monstrously invented words that not only would have
made Quintilian stare and gasp, but would affront the decently literate
of any age.

After all, and though we must sigh and acquiesce in the building of
Babel, we have some right to examine the bricks. I was waiting, the other
day, in a doctor's anteroom, and picked up one of those books--it was a
work on pathology--so thoughtfully left lying in such places; to persuade
us, no doubt, to bear the ills we have rather than fly to others capable
of being illustrated. I found myself engaged in following the manoeuvres
of certain well-meaning bacilli generically described as 'Antibodies.' I
do not accuse the author (who seemed to be a learned man) of having
invented this abominable term: apparently it passed current among
physiologists and he had accepted it for honest coin. I found it, later
on, in Webster's invaluable dictionary: Etymology, 'anti' up against
'body', some noxious 'foreign body' inside your body or mine.

Now gin a body meet a body for our protection and in this gallant spirit,
need a body reward him with this hybrid label? Gratitude apart, I say
that for our own self-respect, whilst we retain any sense of intellectual
pedigree, 'antibody' is no word to throw at a friendly bacillus. Is it
consonant with the high dignity of science to make her talk like a cheap
showman advertising a 'picture-drome'? The man who eats peas with his
knife can at least claim a historical throwback to the days when forks
had but two prongs and the spoons had been removed with the soup. But