Excerpt from A Pentaglot Dictionary of the Terms Employed in Anatomy, Physiology, Pathology, Practical Medicine, Surgery in Two Parts:, With the Leading Term in French, Followed by the Synonymes in the Greek, Latin, German, and English Explanations in English, And Cop, Vol. 1 of 2: A German-English-French Dictionary, Comprehending the Scientific German Terms of the Preceding Part

The importance of an accurate knowledge of the French and German languages to the student of Medicine, few, in these enlightened times, will be ignorant enough to doubt, or have the effrontery to deny. Most auspiciously for the honour of our Profession and the interests of the public, such knowledge is, at length, recognized in the Schools, as an essential branch of medical education. Every attempt, therefore, to facilitate the attainment of these languages, and impart an additional impulse to the youthful and aspiring mind, even though it fail to acquire celebrity, must deserve encouragement and command respect.

Of the profoundly scientific character and high practical value of the publications upon Medicine which are continually emanating from the continental press, none but they who have access to those productions of the Master-Spirits of our art in their original language, can form an adequate conception or correct estimate. Translations of those works into the English are comparatively rare: and the slovenly or defective manner in which such translations have too commonly been executed, is little calculated to awaken regret at the infrequency of their appearance.

If the conquest of difficulties by the unaided efforts of mind or body be regarded as pre-eminently qualifying an individual for the direction of others in the path of labour which he has, himself, trodden and explored, I shall not incur, in the arduous enterprize which I had the courage to conceive, and the perseverance to bring to a successful issue, the imputation of inordinate vanity or presumption. Amidst the toils and anxieties of a widely-extended provincial practice, I acquired in my earlier years, without the assistance of an instructor, a knowledge of the elements of several of the continental languages: and so deeply was my mind impressed by a retrospect of the difficulties with which I had, at first, to contend in the perusal of foreign scientific work, that I then formed the resolution of attempting, should an opportunity ever present itself, to clear for others the path which, to my own progress, had been so painfully and so tediously obstructed.

Some years after my removal from Tamworth to Birmingham, such opportunity was unexpectedly offered. I was applied to, by an intelligent and enterprizing Publisher of this town, to compile for the use of the Medical Student, a Dictionary of French and German Scientific Terms. The proposition, after a deliberate survey of the difficulties attendant on the execution of such a work, was favourably entertained.

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