Perry Pepper O.H. Medical Etymology: The history and derivation of medical terms for students of medicine, dentistry, and nursing

Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders Company, 1949. — 282 p.This handbook was written in the hope of assisting medical, dental and nursing students to understand medical terminology. It is not a dictionary; it is concerned more with the origin and derivation of a word than with its meaning. Modern medical terminology includes words of great antiquity and also those of recent coinage. Less than five per cent of the words are of Anglo-Saxon origin, the remainder are from the Greek, Latin, Arabic, Semitic, French or Italian. Part I gives the background of medical terminology, the prefixes, suffixes and compounding elements used in medical terms. Parts II, III and IV are devoted to the derivation of nearly 4,000 words. An effort has been made to group these under subjects in the order in which they are met in the curriculum of the student.
This book will serve as an excellent reference book for physical therapy students who often find medical terminology confusing and difficult.