Splenectomy
/splɪˈnɛktəmi/noun
Surgical removal of the spleen.
The Greek roots
Literally: “cutting out the spleen”
The story of the word
The spleen carried a heavy symbolic load long before anyone worked out what it does: seat of black bile and so of melancholy, but in English usage also the seat of laughter and of spite, which is why splenetic means bad-tempered and why Baudelaire could call a whole section of his poems Spleen. Surgeons found the organ could be taken out, and removal became routine after abdominal trauma. Only later did its part in fighting encapsulated bacteria emerge, which is why patients without one now carry a vaccination schedule for life.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
In a sentence
A ruptured spleen after the crash meant an emergency splenectomy the same night.
Post-splenectomy patients are told to take a fever seriously.