Abstract

Examples from two territories of medical research work will show the usefulness of signific analysis. Not long ago workers on the clinical and biophysical effects of short wave currents were opposited to each other in different schools. In a former episode the opposition moved about the explaining of short wave effects as "specific" respectively "non-specific". The analysis of the word specific learns, that it entitles a quality, when this quality according to the momental height of our knowledge, is restricted to some sort of things or agents and does not belong to other sorts in the same category. Thus short wave effects are specific, when they are not produced by the longer diathermic wave-length. It is shown however, that like the abusage of similar dutch en german qualifications in ordinary language, the term specific has been reserved by many authors for effects, which they think "interesting". So it may be clear, that a group of workers used the word specific to indicate a non-thermic action. A similar disturbance in understanding followed, when schools called themselves "thermic" and "a-thermic". It is shown, that in the micro-world it is difficult to separate thermic and non-thermic energy, as the former may be a statistic interpretation of the latter. Where thermic specific effects were supposed to be realised in discontinue distribution of the effect of Joule, a discontinuity, which should reach into the world of molecular dimension because of the variability of the electric constants of matter, the volitional resistance against something so "ordinary" like diathermic warmth, led to the non logical opposition of thermists and non-thermists. In a third example, taken from certain problems about the embryologic origin of the autonomic system, it is shown, that a traditional and usual interpretation of the law of the origin of the nervous system from the outer cell-layer may confound the problems. Some questions like the possibility of the mesodermic origin of certain cells of the autonomic system would not be any longer a problem if the law is significally seen as what it is: an a-posterioric description of histiogenetic history. Many terms and problems in medicine will profit by signific analysis and clearing