A Glossary for the Nineties: Chapter 15 - Health
[Taken from A Glossary for the Nineties, by David Rowan (Prion Books, 1998), based on the column of that name in The Guardian's Weekend magazine through most of the 1990s. © David Rowan]
CHAPTER 15: HEALTH
Meet the modern affliction
ARCTIC WILLY n. A nineties affliction, recorded in the British Medical Journal, that affects men who ski in frost-bite temperatures. A chilling thought.
ASTHMA CARRIER n. sl. The danger that road protesters claim is endangering our health. In other words, the motor vehicle. It is the slang of the panses (qv), the campaigners who are Politically Active and Not Seeking Employment.
ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER n. The neurobiological condition being used to justify appalling behaviour by otherwise intelligent children. ADD, as US courts keep hearing, is what makes these "emotional cripples" mug, rob, stab and damage cars. Michael Fay, who gained fame when whipped for his misdeeds in Singapore, claimed to be a slightly older victim, but the Singapore authorities couldn't have been paying attention.
BEDBLOCKER n. med. A patient, usually an elderly person, who stands in the way of hospital economics. Although they do not need immediate medical attention, they cannot be moved from a bed, often because social services cannot afford to house them. The only known cure: radical refinancing of local government.
BODY McCARTHYISM n. A contemporary panic among internal fashion victims (qv) that involves rigorous control of all ones bodily fluids. To a large extent a product of the Aids era, it may explain why your attempt at a kiss meets a handshake, or that sip you offer a practitioner from your beer bottle is curtly refused.
BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER n. Sufferers are baffled, angry, intense and impulsive, and are terrified of being left alone. Parts of the press seem to think Princess Diana was BPD's celebrity carrier, but that sounded an angry, intense and impulsive sort of accusation.
CHRONIC LIFE SYNDROME n. A new medical term to describe the constant pattern of "disease" affecting many of the 13 million Americans aged over 75. According to medics at the Suncoast Gerontology Center in Florida, chronic life is caused by the pattern of illnesses that negates the benefits of our increasingly long lives.
FLATULENCE EVENT n. Overindulged over the weekend? Here's the polite new term for describing your urgent need to break wind. Medics at San Diego's university, studying this topic, couldn't bring themselves to use the less scientific term - it might leave them in bad odour . . .
GOMER n. Hospital slang for the sort of troublesome patient who delights in giving everyone a really hard time. An acronym, it stands for 'Get Out Of My Emergency Room!'
HEALTHISM n. The trend (led by healthists) towards making us aware of the health implications of everything we eat, drink, smoke or otherwise ingest. Healthists are generally not much fun at parties.
INTERNAL FASHION VICTIM n. Someone with those very nineties obsessions, inner health and diet. Identified by i-D magazine; followers are recognisable by a glass of organic carrot juice and pile of vitamin pills.
MENTALISM n. The fashionable tendency for people (admittedly often very dull people) to pretend to be crazy, perhaps as a means of appearing interesting. As the Face magazine describes it, it's the "'I'm mad, me' cult of pretending to be loopy - a response to the pressures of end-of-century life".
MUSCLE DYSMORPHIA n. A psychiatric disorder in which musclebound sporting types somehow convince themselves they are wimps. Experts link the disorder to anorexia nervosa, but with the preoccupation going in the opposite direction: the mirror shows a body that is never big enough. Now if only the disease could be contained among nightclub bouncers . . .
NEBRIATRICIAN n. One of the new branch of specialist health researchers whose "highly controversial" and "deeply disturbing" findings are gold dust to news editors on a quiet day. This one, according to the British Medical Journal, undertakes studies of why people drink alcohol and looks for ways to stop them doing so. Thirsty work.
NONISM n. That extreme form of nineties health faddism in which you avoid any substance that might harm your mental and physical well-being. Forget drink, drugs, caffeine, meat and dairy products - oh, and sex. One Boston psychiatrist whose son had joined the movement described him as a "pleasure anorexic".
NUTRACEUTICAL n. This is food with added vitamins and minerals, designed to make your medicine more palatable. The word is also used to describe one of the so-called "functional foods" - such as bacteria-enhanced yoghurts - that are now all over your supermarket claiming to be good for you. Said to be a cross between pharmaceuticals and, well, old-fashioned food, although taste tests have suggested otherwise.
OBE n. An Out-of-Body Experience: the current fashionable New Age phenomenon that is said to enhance your spiritual health. If you've left your body recently, according to those who know, you're an "eksomatic experiencer who goes beyond your biochemical state". Either that, or you're drunk.
OXYGEN BAR n. An urban retreat, first popularised in Canada, where you can relax and inhale some pure O2 with your drink. Doctors aren't convinced it will make you any healthier, but if you're willing to pay for the buzz, then someone near you will shortly be happy to take your cash.
PARADISE SYNDROME n. med. A new medical condition that afflicts only those poor, unfortunate types who have absolutely everything they could want. "It is when your world is going absolutely, fantastically well and you feel so inspired that you think you must be ill," claims the illness's first populariser, pop star Dave Stewart. The result: a host of imaginary ailments.
PASSIVE OVER-EATING n. med. Scientists' term for the new western malaise - the consumption of fat-filled convenience foods that are quietly turning us obese, even though we might consume less.
PERFORMANCE TENSION DIARRHOEA n. Tense, nervous stomach ache? In need of an urgent toilet visit before that stressful job interview or tough assignment? You are suffering not from the runs, but from this fashionable new syndrome. And now one in five of us is apparently justified in using this posh-sounding name.
PHARM v. To farm genetically modified animals or crops in order to compete with the pharmaceutical industry. Insert a human gene into a cow and use its milk as a cheap source of human serum albumin, used in blood transfusions; or grow modified bananas which contain a vaccine against hepatitis. Cheaper than a pill factory - and those modern pharmyard noises tend to be scientists counting their windfalls.
PHARMACOGENOMICS n. sci. A new field within human genetics which seeks to find out how our inherited DNA make-up controls our responses to various drugs or foods. So if you are likely to develop side effect to, say, a drug for your heart, you can be screened out at an early stage and pout on a more suitable treatment.
RECOVERY n. The health fad of the mid-nineties, it presumes that most of use were at one stage the victim of some sort of abuse, that we must merely face up to in order to make the sun shine again in our lives. The term has gone from the language of therapy to mainstream TV talk shows, which feed off public confessions and so treat the world as one big dysfunctional family. Critics of recovery attack it as "victimology", in which there is always someone else we can blame for our current difficulties.
ROID RAGE n. Not to be confused with road rage: this is the aggression common in those macho types who take anabolic steroids to build up their muscles. As Camille Paglia defines it, it's "the heightened state of violent aggression induced by excess testosterone" - and it's proof that gyms are unhealthy places.
TASK COMPLETION WISHFUL THINKING SYNDROME n. jarg. A form of behaviour discovered after five years of research by Dr Dale Griffin of Sussex University. In non-academic language, it means that projects tend to take longer than you expect.
TATT n. A contemporary medical condition coined to describe those who are "tired all the time". Current theories of Tatt's causes include an excess of central heating and pursuing a lazy domestic lifestyle; suggested cures include a dose of Tott (that's Turning Off The Television).
TIPSY COW DISEASE n. euph. The British Veterinary Association's preferred term for mad cow disease, on the grounds that BSE-affected cows show the symptoms of drunkenness rather than the more terrifying madness. Nice try, guys, but when you try that hard, euphemisms just don't tend to catch on.
TUBE n. sl. A medical routine particularly favoured by young male doctors: in medical slang it stands for the "Totally Unnecessary Breast Examination" - and is an example of the proliferating medical slang collected by Dr Phil Hammond. If you see TF Bundy on your medical notes, this suggests you are "Totally Fucked But Unfortunately Not Dead Yet"; and Grolies are "Guardian Readers Of Limited Intelligence In Ethnic Skirts". Feel better now?
CHAPTER 15: HEALTH
Meet the modern affliction
ARCTIC WILLY n. A nineties affliction, recorded in the British Medical Journal, that affects men who ski in frost-bite temperatures. A chilling thought.
ASTHMA CARRIER n. sl. The danger that road protesters claim is endangering our health. In other words, the motor vehicle. It is the slang of the panses (qv), the campaigners who are Politically Active and Not Seeking Employment.
ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER n. The neurobiological condition being used to justify appalling behaviour by otherwise intelligent children. ADD, as US courts keep hearing, is what makes these "emotional cripples" mug, rob, stab and damage cars. Michael Fay, who gained fame when whipped for his misdeeds in Singapore, claimed to be a slightly older victim, but the Singapore authorities couldn't have been paying attention.
BEDBLOCKER n. med. A patient, usually an elderly person, who stands in the way of hospital economics. Although they do not need immediate medical attention, they cannot be moved from a bed, often because social services cannot afford to house them. The only known cure: radical refinancing of local government.
BODY McCARTHYISM n. A contemporary panic among internal fashion victims (qv) that involves rigorous control of all ones bodily fluids. To a large extent a product of the Aids era, it may explain why your attempt at a kiss meets a handshake, or that sip you offer a practitioner from your beer bottle is curtly refused.
BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER n. Sufferers are baffled, angry, intense and impulsive, and are terrified of being left alone. Parts of the press seem to think Princess Diana was BPD's celebrity carrier, but that sounded an angry, intense and impulsive sort of accusation.
CHRONIC LIFE SYNDROME n. A new medical term to describe the constant pattern of "disease" affecting many of the 13 million Americans aged over 75. According to medics at the Suncoast Gerontology Center in Florida, chronic life is caused by the pattern of illnesses that negates the benefits of our increasingly long lives.
FLATULENCE EVENT n. Overindulged over the weekend? Here's the polite new term for describing your urgent need to break wind. Medics at San Diego's university, studying this topic, couldn't bring themselves to use the less scientific term - it might leave them in bad odour . . .
GOMER n. Hospital slang for the sort of troublesome patient who delights in giving everyone a really hard time. An acronym, it stands for 'Get Out Of My Emergency Room!'
HEALTHISM n. The trend (led by healthists) towards making us aware of the health implications of everything we eat, drink, smoke or otherwise ingest. Healthists are generally not much fun at parties.
INTERNAL FASHION VICTIM n. Someone with those very nineties obsessions, inner health and diet. Identified by i-D magazine; followers are recognisable by a glass of organic carrot juice and pile of vitamin pills.
MENTALISM n. The fashionable tendency for people (admittedly often very dull people) to pretend to be crazy, perhaps as a means of appearing interesting. As the Face magazine describes it, it's the "'I'm mad, me' cult of pretending to be loopy - a response to the pressures of end-of-century life".
MUSCLE DYSMORPHIA n. A psychiatric disorder in which musclebound sporting types somehow convince themselves they are wimps. Experts link the disorder to anorexia nervosa, but with the preoccupation going in the opposite direction: the mirror shows a body that is never big enough. Now if only the disease could be contained among nightclub bouncers . . .
NEBRIATRICIAN n. One of the new branch of specialist health researchers whose "highly controversial" and "deeply disturbing" findings are gold dust to news editors on a quiet day. This one, according to the British Medical Journal, undertakes studies of why people drink alcohol and looks for ways to stop them doing so. Thirsty work.
NONISM n. That extreme form of nineties health faddism in which you avoid any substance that might harm your mental and physical well-being. Forget drink, drugs, caffeine, meat and dairy products - oh, and sex. One Boston psychiatrist whose son had joined the movement described him as a "pleasure anorexic".
NUTRACEUTICAL n. This is food with added vitamins and minerals, designed to make your medicine more palatable. The word is also used to describe one of the so-called "functional foods" - such as bacteria-enhanced yoghurts - that are now all over your supermarket claiming to be good for you. Said to be a cross between pharmaceuticals and, well, old-fashioned food, although taste tests have suggested otherwise.
OBE n. An Out-of-Body Experience: the current fashionable New Age phenomenon that is said to enhance your spiritual health. If you've left your body recently, according to those who know, you're an "eksomatic experiencer who goes beyond your biochemical state". Either that, or you're drunk.
OXYGEN BAR n. An urban retreat, first popularised in Canada, where you can relax and inhale some pure O2 with your drink. Doctors aren't convinced it will make you any healthier, but if you're willing to pay for the buzz, then someone near you will shortly be happy to take your cash.
PARADISE SYNDROME n. med. A new medical condition that afflicts only those poor, unfortunate types who have absolutely everything they could want. "It is when your world is going absolutely, fantastically well and you feel so inspired that you think you must be ill," claims the illness's first populariser, pop star Dave Stewart. The result: a host of imaginary ailments.
PASSIVE OVER-EATING n. med. Scientists' term for the new western malaise - the consumption of fat-filled convenience foods that are quietly turning us obese, even though we might consume less.
PERFORMANCE TENSION DIARRHOEA n. Tense, nervous stomach ache? In need of an urgent toilet visit before that stressful job interview or tough assignment? You are suffering not from the runs, but from this fashionable new syndrome. And now one in five of us is apparently justified in using this posh-sounding name.
PHARM v. To farm genetically modified animals or crops in order to compete with the pharmaceutical industry. Insert a human gene into a cow and use its milk as a cheap source of human serum albumin, used in blood transfusions; or grow modified bananas which contain a vaccine against hepatitis. Cheaper than a pill factory - and those modern pharmyard noises tend to be scientists counting their windfalls.
PHARMACOGENOMICS n. sci. A new field within human genetics which seeks to find out how our inherited DNA make-up controls our responses to various drugs or foods. So if you are likely to develop side effect to, say, a drug for your heart, you can be screened out at an early stage and pout on a more suitable treatment.
RECOVERY n. The health fad of the mid-nineties, it presumes that most of use were at one stage the victim of some sort of abuse, that we must merely face up to in order to make the sun shine again in our lives. The term has gone from the language of therapy to mainstream TV talk shows, which feed off public confessions and so treat the world as one big dysfunctional family. Critics of recovery attack it as "victimology", in which there is always someone else we can blame for our current difficulties.
ROID RAGE n. Not to be confused with road rage: this is the aggression common in those macho types who take anabolic steroids to build up their muscles. As Camille Paglia defines it, it's "the heightened state of violent aggression induced by excess testosterone" - and it's proof that gyms are unhealthy places.
TASK COMPLETION WISHFUL THINKING SYNDROME n. jarg. A form of behaviour discovered after five years of research by Dr Dale Griffin of Sussex University. In non-academic language, it means that projects tend to take longer than you expect.
TATT n. A contemporary medical condition coined to describe those who are "tired all the time". Current theories of Tatt's causes include an excess of central heating and pursuing a lazy domestic lifestyle; suggested cures include a dose of Tott (that's Turning Off The Television).
TIPSY COW DISEASE n. euph. The British Veterinary Association's preferred term for mad cow disease, on the grounds that BSE-affected cows show the symptoms of drunkenness rather than the more terrifying madness. Nice try, guys, but when you try that hard, euphemisms just don't tend to catch on.
TUBE n. sl. A medical routine particularly favoured by young male doctors: in medical slang it stands for the "Totally Unnecessary Breast Examination" - and is an example of the proliferating medical slang collected by Dr Phil Hammond. If you see TF Bundy on your medical notes, this suggests you are "Totally Fucked But Unfortunately Not Dead Yet"; and Grolies are "Guardian Readers Of Limited Intelligence In Ethnic Skirts". Feel better now?
<< Home