the medical word mesothelioma

Getting to the root of the word mesothelioma. Where does this medical term come from ? This research will bring about the etymology and the definition of the medical term mesothelioma.

Without looking anywhere I already know that meso is always used as a prefix to mean in the middle of. Like the word mesoamerica means in the middle of the American continent. That is somewhere in Guatamala and Honduras and it is the land between North and South America. Mesopotamia is an old land that was situated between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris where the Babylonian, the Akkadian, and the Sumerian civilizations rose and fell.

oma is a suffix in medical terminology that refers to cancer. I know that because I know about carcinoma, lymphoma, etc.

thel will take some research however.

Interestingly enough when I do a search on thel the first few pages only bring up pages about women who like women. The L i would guess is a famous tv series about lesbian lovers. Just as interesting I guess is the results I get when I broaden my search to include "medical thel". Here I encounter the first link that informs me about where on the body the thel is pointing. And that place is the nipple.

How quaint and how easy that is to remember. The thel word is to the nipple what the l word is to girls who like nipples.

So onwards to the next clue and while the thele meaning seems to point clearly to an end meaning of the word mesothelioma referring to a condition pertaining to women. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The etymology of the word "thele" goes all the way back to the Greek language where they had their symbolic way of representing the concept of nipple or mother's breast. Again in Greek the word mast ( symbolically represented ) referred to a woman's breast or a man's pectoral muscle. The Roman Latin which came later wrote the same concept as mamm and mammill or breast and nipple.

So meso-theli-oma seems at first to refer to cancer surrounding the breast or nipple.

Other words that use the concept of theli.

• epithelial 
• mesothelial
• mesothelium
• epithelium

Getting into some medical terminology we find that simple squamous epithelial cells found at the mesodermal area or in the second layer of skin (between the first and third layer - in the middle ) line the peritoneal cavities, the cardial cavities, and the pleural cavities of organ tissue. These mesothelial cells also line the synovial space of the joints of the body. Mesothelium can be phagocytic in nature. Mesothelium found in the mammal area that are phagocytes can be either neutrophils or macrophages and they are different types of white blood cells ( leukocytes ) support the immune system. They go around and destroy foreign material in the body by ingesting it.

This is a pretty thick word.

But we come to a point where we see were mesothelioma can be defined.

It is not at all a cancer of the breast tissue.

The medical dictionary definition for mesothelioma is:

 From MedlinePlus

• a tumor derived from mesothelial tissue ( as that lining the peritoneum or pleura ) 

The diagnosis of this type of cancer is almost always correlated to exposure to asbestos and the bulk of patients presenting with signs and symptoms of mesothelioma have had jobs or have lived in environments where asbestos was present.

The asbestos particles once inhaled somehow affect the proper functioning of the white cells that are usually there to ingest foreign material thus protecting the lining skin or mesothelium layer of the organs such as the heart, lungs, etc. This is mesothelioma.

The asbestos issue is equally interesting.

See asbestos on wikipedia


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