"About once in twenty years, the doctors re-label all the old complaints, and give them new names. Thirty odd years ago pneumonia was "lung fever," and "sciatica" plain "rheumatiz." But complaints with these old-fashioned English names are bad for doctors. People get too well acquainted with them, and then learn to cure themselves. When the doctors find them out, they re-christen the whole lot. This is done by charging a gun full of Greek and Latin words and firing into the old complaints. Where a shot hits the name sticks. The sick are frightened when they are told that these words are the matter with them, and think something new and awful has got them.
When a doctor has tried to cure a sick man and can't, he tells him he's got "malaria." Nothing readily cures malaria in New York but dying."
