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Rude health It's all too easy for medical terminology to morph into careless terms of abuse, writes Maurice Gueret, as he recalls a famous rivalry between Dublin surgeons
Hurting terms Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. School-going children know the folly of those lines. 'Spa' was the big word in my boys-only day-school. Short for spastic, as doctors describe a muscle spasm. Spa was a word for non-sporting boys who could be relied upon to drop any ball that was passed to them. In broader use, it was liberally applied to class outsiders, unwelcome in childhood cliques. The urban dictionary suggests the word originated in Dublin's north city in the 1980s, but I clearly remember it being used frequently almost a decade before. Sometimes use of the word was accompanied by flexion of the fingers and wrist muscles, facial grimacing and unintelligible speech. The sort of thing President Trump does when he wants to insult somebody with a disability.
On the spectrum One feature of our election campaign was the aberrant use of the word 'autistic' by a senator (Catherine Noone, pictured right) to describe her party leader. It filled the airwaves, letter...