Dorland's medical reference works
Dorland's is the brand name of a family of medical reference works (including dictionaries, spellers and word books, and spell-check software) in various media spanning printed books, CD-ROMs, and online content. The flagship products are Dorland's Illustrated Medical Dictionary (currently in its 32nd edition) and Dorland's Pocket Medical Dictionary (currently in its 29th edition). The principal dictionary was first published in 1890 as the American Illustrated Medical Dictionary, including 770 pages. The pocket edition, called the American Pocket Medical Dictionary, was first published in 1898, consisting of just over 500 pages.
With the death of the editor William Alexander Newman Dorland, AM, MD in 1956, the dictionaries were retitled to incorporate his name, which was how they had generally come to be known. The illustrated dictionary had grown to 2208 pages for the 31st edition.
The dictionaries were historically published by Saunders.
List of products
Medical dictionary
A medical dictionary is a lexicon for words used in medicine. The three major medical dictionaries in the United States are Stedman's, Taber's, and Dorland's Pocket Medical Dictionary. Other significant medical dictionaries are distributed by Elsevier, the world's largest publisher of medical and scientific literature, and their French division Masson. Dictionaries often have multiple versions, with content adapted for different user groups. For example Stedman's Concise Medical Dictionary and Dorland's are for general use and allied health care, while the full text editions are reference works used by medical students, doctors, and health professionals. Many of the dictionaries mentioned above are available online, and other electronic dictionaries for medicine are available as downloadable software packages for Apple Macintosh and Windows computers, PDAs, and smartphones or as CD-ROM, as well as bilingual dictionaries and translation dictionaries.
History
The Synonyma Simonis Genuensis (the Synonyms of Simon of Genoa), attributed to the physician to Pope Nicholas IV in the year 1288, was printed by Antonius Zarotus at Milan in 1473. Referring to a copy held in the library of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, Henry wrote in 1905 that "It is the first edition of the first medical dictionary." By the time of Antonio Guaineri and Savonarola, this work was used alongside others by Oribasius, Isidore of Seville, Mondino dei Liuzzi, Serapion, and Pietro d'Abano. Then, as now, writers struggled with the terminology used in various translations from earlier Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic works. Later works by Jacques Desparts and Jacopo Berengario da Carpi continued building on the Synonyma.
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