pill / the Pill

8 April 2024

A pill is a tablet or other such mass containing a drug intended to be swallowed. The pill is an oral contraceptive. The definite article underscores the revolutionary nature of reliable oral contraception. With the pill, women for the first time could exercise their reproductive autonomy, opening up opportunities in higher education and careers that unplanned pregnancies would otherwise prevent. It quite literally changed society.

The English word pill ultimately comes from the Latin pilula, meaning little ball or pellet. The exact route into English, however, is unknown. It could be a borrowing directly from Latin and subsequent clipping. It could be from the Middle French pillule, the Middle Dutch pille, the Middle High German pille, or some combination of any or all of these.

The first known appearance in English is in a translation of Lanfranc of Milan’s Chirugia Magna, a treatise on surgery and medical techniques. The translation dates to some time before the year 1400. The section of Lanfranc’s book about treating cataracts has this:

Þe patient mote absteine him fro sopers & fro al maner fruitis þat engendriþ moistnes saue he schal vse hote þingis, & he schal ofte be purgid wiþ pillis cochie rasis; þat is þe beste þing laxatif þat mai be for iȝen.

(The patient must abstain from dinners and from all manner of fruits that engender moistness, save he shall use hot things, and he shall often be purged with cochie rasis pills; that is the best laxative that there is for the eyes.)

Exactly what cochie rasis is isn’t known; rasis would indicate it is some kind of resin. And in this case laxative probably has nothing to do with the bowels but is rather used more generally to refer to a substance that causes the body to expel bad humors, in this case perhaps through tears.

Pills have been used in anglophone medicine ever since. But the pill (often capitalized, the Pill, especially in early use) refers to an oral contraceptive. The earliest use of pill in this sense that I have found is from a United Press syndicated story of 7 November 1950. Note that the use of pill here is still generic, a pill, not yet the pill:

Stone said the pill or injection method might render a woman incapable of conceiving a child for a period of several month at a time, but would not later interfere with fertility when conception was desired.

We see this transitional, and rhyming, use of the pill in a 21 October 1956 piece in Ohio’s Columbus Dispatch. It’s not clear whether this is actually a use of the pill or it’s just constructed to be parallel with the will:

Much of the talk about the “P[opulation]-bomb”, has inevitably led to discussion of simple, easy-to-use and effective birth control measure, perhaps in the form of a pill.

But, Cook believes, “you have got to have the will to go along with the pill” in controlling the size of families.

But the following year, 1957, we get an unambiguous use of the Pill, which appears in the book The Human Sum, edited by C. H. Rolph:

Dr. A. S. Parkes, of the Medical Research Council, examines the possibilities of producing “controlled temporary infertility without undesirable side-effects.” He gives a modestly exciting account of the quest now going on, in biological laboratories in various parts of the world,  for what laymen like myself insist on calling “the Pill”; and by this phrase, which, like all men of science, Dr. Parkes would doubtless reject, I mean the simple and completely reliable contraceptive taken by mouth.

1957 is the year when oral contraceptives for women went on the market in the United States. An oral contraceptive for men, however, has continued to be an elusive goal for researchers. We get the first reference to the male pill in a 21 April 1961 article in the Los Angeles Times. I quote the article at some length because it makes some interesting observations and assumptions. First is the accurate (so far) prediction that the quest for a male pill may never come to fruition. Another is the question of whether or not men would use it—women have a lot more at stake when it comes to being assured that their contraception works. (Not to mention that they would have to trust the man when he says he is on the pill.)

A pilot study to determine the efficiency and long-term effects of a new oral contraceptive pill for men has been under way in Los Angeles for the past 10 months.

In an exclusive interview with the physician conducting the tests, the Times learned the pills of the type being studied appear to have most of the characteristics of an ideal contraceptive.

But, he said, it may be years before the pill is released for general use—if it ever is.

The pill probably would be preferable to the recently marketed oral contraceptive for women, provided men would be willing to take it, said Dr. Henry J. Olsen.

[…]

Dr. Olsen, who is clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at UCLA Medical School, said the male pill must be taken daily for as long a time as infertility is desired.

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Sources:

Bundschu, Barbara (United Press). “Birth Control Pill May be Available in Five Years.” Cincinnati Post, 7 November 1950, 22/4. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Diamond, Edwin (INS). “Population Rise Held Dangerous.” Columbus Dispatch, 21 October 1956, 22A/6. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Lanfrank’s “Science of Cirurgie.” Early English Text Society, O.S. 102. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1894, 250. HathiTrust Digital Archive. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ashmole MS 1396.

Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. pille, n.

Nelson, Harry. “Contraceptive Pills for Men Being Tested Here; 30 Subjects in Study.” Los Angeles Times, 21 April 1961, B1/5. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2006, s.v. pill, n.3.; June 2000, male pill, n.

Rolph, C. H., ed. The Human Sum. New York: MacMillan, 1957, 6.

Photo credit: BetteDavisEyes, 2006. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.

niobium / columbium

“Apollo and Diana Attacking the Children of Niobe,” Jacques-Louis David, oil on canvas, 1772

5 April 2024

Niobium is a chemical element with atomic number 41 and the symbol Nb. It had been known previously as columbium, symbol Cb. Niobium is a light gray, crystalline transition metal with a hardness similar to titanium and a ductility similar to iron. It is used as a component of steel alloys, in superconductors, and in jewelry as a hypoallergenic alternative to nickel.

The element was discovered in 1801 by Charles Hatchet in a mineral sample found in the British Museum. Hatchet named it columbium as the sample came from Connecticut. Columbia being a poetic name for the United States (see Columbia):

Considering, therefore, that the metal which has been examined is so very different from those hitherto discovered, it appeared proper that it should be distinguished by a peculiar name; and, having consulted with several of the eminent and ingenious chemists of this country, I have been induced to give it the name of Columbium.

But in 1809, William Hyde Wollaston falsely concluded that Hatchett had erred, mistaking the element tantalum, atomic number 73, for a new element. The two elements have similar properties and are frequently found together in ores. Tantalum had been identified in 1802 by Anders Ekberg. Then in 1844, chemist Heinrich Rose “discovered” a new element in an ore that also contained tantalum; he either did not know of or did not recognize Hatchett’s earlier discovery and named it niobium:

Ich nenne dasselbe Niobium und sein Oxyd Niobsäure, von Niobe, der Tochter des Tantalus, urn durch den Namen die Aehnlichkeit mit dem nach letzterem benannten Metalle und dessen Oxyde anzudeuten.

(I call the same niobium and its oxide niobic acid, from Niobe, the daughter of Tantalus, in order to indicate by the name the similarity with the metal and its oxides named after the latter.)

The weeping rock (Ağlayan Kaya) in Mount Sipylus, Manisa, Turkey said to be the grieving Niobe; the porous limestone formation appears to “weep” as rainwater seeps through it

In Greek mythology, Niobe is the daughter of Tantalus. She had fourteen children and boasted because of this she was a greater mother than Leto, the mother of the gods Apollo and Artemis. Insulting someone’s mother is never a good idea, especially so when that someone is a god. And to avenge the slight upon their mother, Apollo and Artemis set about killing all fourteen of Niobe’s children. Niobe wasted away in grief and was eventually turned to stone.

Both names continued in use, niobium primarily in Europe and Columbium in the United States until 1950, when the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry made declared niobium to be the official name. But seventy-five years later, one can still occasionally find uses of columbium.

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Sources:

Hatchet, Charles. “An Analysis of a Mineral Substance from North America, Containing a Metal Hitherto Unknown” (26 November 1801). Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 92, December 1802, 46–66 at 65. DOI: 10.1098/rstl.1802.0005.

Miśkowiec, Pawel. “Name Game: The Naming History of the Chemical Elements: Part 2—Turbulent Nineteenth Century.” Foundations of Chemistry, 8 December 2022. DOI: 10.1007/s10698-022-09451-w.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2003, s.v. niobium, n.; second edition, s.v. columbium, n.

Wollaston, William Hyde. “On the Identity of Columbium and Tantalum” (8 June 1809). Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 99, December 1809, 246–52. DOI: 10.1098/rstl.1809.0017.

Rose, Heinrich. “Über die Zusammensetzung der Tantalite und ein im Tantalite von Baiern enthaltenes neues Metall.” Annalen der Physik, 139.10, 1844, 317–41 at 335–36. DOI: 10.1002/andp.18441391006.

Image credits: Jacques-Louis David, 1772. Dallas Museum of Art. Wikipedia. Public domain image as a mechanical reproduction of a public domain work. Carole Raddato, 2015. Flickr.com. Wikipedia. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

Maritimes / Maritimer / Maritime Provinces / Atlantic Provinces

Map of Canada with the Maritime Provinces (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island) marked in red

3 April 2024

The adjective maritime is a mid sixteenth century borrowing from French, which in turn is from the Latin maritimus, an adjective meaning related to the sea.

But in Canada, the Maritimes, refers to the provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, not to be confused with the Atlantic Provinces, which adds Newfoundland and Labrador to those three.

The term Maritime Provinces, often clipped to the Maritimes, dates to at least 1847, when it appears in Jennet Roy’s History of Canada:

These provinces are of two classes—first, the Inland Provinces, watered only by great lakes and rivers, and, secondly, the Maritime Provinces. Canada belongs to the first class, and is more extensive, more productive, and more populous, than all the Maritime Provinces united; it is also the principal resort of Emigrants from the Mother Country.

But in early use, which provinces constituted the Maritimes was a bit fungible. So in his book, Roy may have meant the phrase to refer to Newfoundland and Labrador as well.

Residents of the Maritimes are called Maritimers, a usage that dates to at least 1894, when it appears in the 8 October 1894 issue of the Montreal Daily Star:

MARITIMERS TO MEET

Sir William Dawson has accepted the invitation of Dr. A. Lapthorn Smith, president of the Maritime Provinces Association, to be present and address the annual meeting of the Association this evening in the Y.M.C.A. building. Sir William is the honorary president.

The phrase Atlantic Provinces appears in April 1855 issue of Monthly Nautical Magazine and Quarterly Review:

As it is with the coals of the two countries, so it is with the timber. From Nova-Scotia and New-Brunswick, we may obtain the soft bituminous description, while these Provinces require from us, for the use of steamboats and foundries, large quantities of anthracite, which nature has not provided to their hand. […] The demand for pitch pine, oak, locust, hickory, and black walnut, and many kinds of cabinet wood, none of which are found in these Atlantic Provinces, will be greatly increased under the operation of free trade influences, which the late treaty secures.

That last article was from the perspective of the United States, but a use of Atlantic Provinces by a Canadian publication would appear in August 1855 in an article about a proposed confederation of provinces in what was then known as British North America. From the Anglo-American Magazine, published in Toronto:

To some persons, it may seem as absurd thus to connect the Atlantic Provinces with British Oregon, Vancouver or Queen Charlotte’s Islands, as to connect them, in like manner with New Zealand. But it must be borne in mind, that we are considering the question of a union of the British North American Colonies; and the great object of that union would not be attained, unless every part of the British North America—particularly of the continental portions—participated in it.

And there is this in London, England’s Daily News of 14 February 1867, reporting on the formation of the confederation of Canada:

The plan of Confederation which is now found practicable is much less imposing than that which was contemplated two years ago. It does not embrace all the provinces of the Atlantic seaboard, nor British Columbia. Newfoundland and Prince Edward’s Island have sent no delegates to England, and the new Confederation will only include Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the Canadas. It will be remembered that in 1864, when the leading Canadian politicians formed a Coalition Government, the various maritime provinces were negotiating with one another for a close union among themselves, for the furtherance of their common interests. The introduction of the larger scheme, originating at Quebec, founded on a proposal to annex the maritime provinces to Canada, frustrated the design of the smaller, more practicable union, towards which the Atlantic provinces were naturally tending. The new Confederation has not absorbed all the elements of the defeated scheme, but it must either prove so successful as to draw Newfoundland and Prince Edward’s Island into it at some future time, or prove a barrier to the realization of a union dictated by many considerations of policy and interest.

The two Canadas (Upper and Lower Canada or Canada West and Canada East) referred to in the article are what would become the provinces of Ontario and Quebec under the confederation. Rupert’s Land, controlled by the Hudson’s Bay Company, would come under Canadian control in 1870, becoming the province of Manitoba and the Northwest Territories. British Columbia would join in 1871. Prince Edward Island would join the confederation in 1873. The Yukon Territory was formed from a portion of the Northwest Territories in 1898, as would Saskatchewan and Alberta in 1905. Newfoundland and Labrador would join the confederation in 1949. And in 1999 the territory of Nunavut was formed out of a portion of the Northwest Territories. (There is a legal distinction between the provinces and territories regarding from where their administrative powers derive, but it is a distinction with little practical difference.)

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Sources:

Daily News (London), 14 February 1867, 4/3. Gale Primary Sources: British Library Newspapers.

Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles, first edition, 1967, s.v. Maritime, n., Maritime Provinces, n., Maritimer, n., Atlantic Provinces, n. DHCP-2.

Hamilton, P. S. “Union of the Colonies of British North America.” The Anglo-American Magazine (Toronto), 7.2, August 1855, 79–87 at 87. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Lewis, Charlton T. and Charles Short. A Latin Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1879, s.v. maritimus. Brepols: Database of Latin Dictionaries.

“Maritimers to Meet.” Montreal Daily Star, 8 October 1894, 6/3. Newspapers.com.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2000, s.v. Maritimer, n., maritime, adj. and n.; 1999, s.v. Maritime Provinces, n.; September 2013, s.v. Atlantic provinces, n.

“The Reciprocal Timber Trade of the United States and British North America.” Monthly Nautical Magazine and Quarterly Review (New York), 2.1, April 1855, 82–85 at 82–83. Gale Primary Sources.

Roy, Jennet. History of Canada for the Use of Schools and Families. New York: 1847, 165–66. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Image credit: Allice Hunter, 2021. Wikimedia Commons. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

tsunami / tidal wave

Village in Banda Aceh, Indonesia following the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that claimed the lives of more than a quarter million people

1 April 2024

A tsunami is a series of large waves caused by an earthquake or other underwater disturbance. The phenomenon is also known by the technically inaccurate term tidal wave. Both terms have been in English use for over a century, with tidal wave being the older and until relatively recently the far more common of the two.

Tidal wave is an open compound noun formed within English, tidal + wave. Originally, the term had a very different meaning, referring to the bulge of water in the middle of the ocean caused by the gravitational pull of the moon. This sense of tidal wave dates to the early eighteenth century, when it appears in a 1715 treatise on the tides written by Edward Barlow, an English priest and inventor:

Notwithstanding the Co-extension of the Moon’s Pressure, to all that Tract of the Atlantick already described; so as to adjust the Primary Tide to itself, thro’out the said Extent of the Sea, to the same Instant, from the very nature of its Libration; yet as to that Part of the same Tidal Wave, which keeps closest to the Sea’s Central Meridian, where it rowls in deepest Water, and flows in the directest Channel, from the Tropick, its supposed Axe, towards the Pole; it must needs run higher than the rest of the Ocean.

Tidal wave could also be applied to the incoming water in a harbor at high tide, especially in a place where the tides were extreme. Because they resembled such an extreme tidal influx, by the mid nineteenth century tidal wave also came to applied to the waves generated by an earthquake, even though these waves are not tidal in nature. The earliest use in this sense that I have found (there are undoubtedly earlier examples out there), is from the Boston Courier of 6 May 1843, describing such a surge of water in Nova Scotia. From the description, it’s easy to see how such an earthquake-created surge could be mistaken for an extreme tidal surge:

A Tidal Wave. A singular phenomenon, which occasioned no little alarm, occurred at Yarmouth, N.S., on the 18th ult. The Herald, published at that place, says that at low water, a little before dusk, the tide suddenly rushed in, in the space of a few minutes to the height of five to seven feet, and immediately receded with equal rapidity, dragging some small craft from their moorings, and leaving the flats again bare. The whole took place in about twenty minutes. At Bunker’s Island and the Cove the water rose ten feet.

Tidal wave can also be used figuratively. Here is an example from the Bristol Mercury of 11 May 1839. The allusion here seems to be that of a tidal surge, rather than an earthquake-created one:

One thing has been proved, we think, sufficiently—that a government based on the doctrine of finality cannot stand: it was the rock on which the administration of Lord Melbourne has split. We are now about to try the interregnum of a Tory rule, that is less likely to withstand the shock of opinion, and the perpetual buffeting of the tidal wave of the movement still going on.

Tidal wave was far more common in non-scientific use than tsunami until the 1970s. Tsunami is a borrowing from Japanese, a compound formed in that language from tsu (harbor) + nami (waves). It first gained traction in the English-speaking scientific community in the early twentieth century because tidal wave is an inaccurate term when applied to earthquake-created surges.

The earliest use of tsunami in English that I know of is in Washington, DC’s Evening Star of 20 July 1896 in reference to the Sanriku earthquake of June 1896, magnitude 7.2. The earthquake created two tsunamis caused at least 22,000 deaths in Japan:

At about 8 o’clock the people living along the coast were startled from their tranquillity by a frightful roaring from the sea, likened to the reports of heavy artillery. Roused to action by cries of “tsunami,” tsunami,” [sic] (“tidal wave,” “tidal wave”) from those who realized the impending disaster, the inhabitants rushed from their homes into a night of pitchy blackness to be overtaken and engulfed in their flight to higher ground.

Early uses of tsunami in English were invariably in a Japanese context. The first use outside of that context that I know of appears in the journal Nature of 21 December 1929 in reference to a tsunami that struck the Maritime provinces of Canada:

The earthquake was obviously of the highest order of intensity at its centre, for it overthrew chimneys, and was therefore of the order of over No. 7 on the RossiForel scale in the towns of Nova Scotia, more than 400 miles from its origin, and it occasioned a tsunami or earthquake wave, which drowned 26 people on the Burin Peninsula in Newfoundland, did extensive damage to property, and in places swept inland to the height of 100 feet.

Like tidal wave, the noun tsunami can also be used figuratively to mean an overwhelming force. The first such use that I’m aware of occupies a transitional stage between literal and figurative. It is in the context of ocean pollution by undersea explorer Jacques Cousteau. From the San Francisco Chronicle of 3 April 1970:

Nowhere is this sense of urgency stronger than in America’s new ecological consciousness, Cousteau said.

“Perhaps a tsunami of salvation will come from America,” Cousteau said, using the technical term for a tidal wave. “It must come—for that’s what the oceans are all about: not for man to get richer, but for man to survive.”

And a figurative use of tsunami completely divorced from the context of the ocean appears two years later. From the journal Science of 11 August 1972:

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is currently swimming through a tsunami of comments generated by its announced intention to alter the regulations concerning the dispensation of methadone.

Today, tsunami has been completely anglicized and it has overwhelmed the older term tidal wave.

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Sources:

Barlow, Edward. “The Second Treatise of the Tide.” In Meteorological Essays. London: John Hooke and Thomas Caldecott, 1715, 102. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“The Change in the Ministry.” Bristol Mercury (England), 11 May 1839, 3/1. Gale Primary Sources: British Library Newspapers.

“Dark View of Ocean Pollution.” San Francisco Chronicle (California), 3 April 1970, 6/2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Gregory, J.W. “The Earthquake South of Newfoundland and Submarine Canyons” (letter). Nature, 124, 21 December 1929, 945–46. DOI: 10.1038/124945a0.

Holden, Constance. “Methadone: New FDA Guidelines Would Tighten Distribution.” Science, 177.4048, 11 August 1972, 502/1.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2023, s.v. tidal wave, n.; second edition, 1989, tsunami, n.

“The Terrible Tidal Wave.” Evening Star (Washington, DC), 20 July 1896, 1/6. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“A Tidal Wave.” Boston Courier (Massachusetts), 6 May 1843, 2/4. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Photo credit: Philip A. McDanial, 2 January 2005, US Navy photo. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.

nihonium

Monument commemorating the discovery of nihonium at the west gate to the Riken institute in Wako, Japan

29 March 2024

Nihonium is a synthetic chemical element with atomic number 113 and the symbol Nh. The half-life of its longest-lived isotope is measured in seconds. It has no applications beyond pure research.

The element was first reported to have been produced in 2003 at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Russia as part of a collaboration with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in the United States. The JINR-LLNL team published their finding in February 2004. But in October 2004, scientists at the Riken institute in Japan published a more detailed report on work they had been conducting on element 113.

It took until 2016 for the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) to resolve the dispute over which group had priority in the discovery. IUPAC decided that the Japanese group had priority and announced this preliminary finding, along with the assignment of the name nihonium, in a press release dated 8 June 2016:

For the element with atomic number 113 the discoverers at RIKEN Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based Science (Japan) proposed the name nihonium and the symbol Nh. Nihon is one of the two ways to say “Japan” in Japanese, and literally mean “the Land of Rising Sun”. The name is proposed to make a direct connection to the nation where the element was discovered. Element 113 is the first element to have been discovered in an Asian country.

IUPAC finalized its decision in December 2016.

IUPAC guidelines formulated in 2016 require new elements be named after either a mythological character or concept (or an astronomical object named after such a mythological concept), a mineral, a place, or a scientist. Elements in columns 1–16 of the periodic table take the usual suffix -ium. Those in column 17 take the suffix -ine, and those in column 18 the suffix -on. Nihonium is in column 13, hence the -ium ending. Of course, older names for elements may not conform to these guidelines.

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Sources:

International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC). “IUPAC Is Naming the Four New Elements Nihonium, Moscovium, Tennessine, and Oganesson  (press release), 8 June 2016.

Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR). “Discovery of the New Chemical Elements with Numbers 113, 115, 117 and 118” (press release), 6 January 2016.

Miśkowiec, Pawel. “Name Game: The Naming History of the Chemical Elements—Part 3—Rivalry of Scientists in the Twentieth Century.” Foundations of Chemistry, 12 November 2022. DOI: 10.1007/s10698-022-09452-9.

Morita, Kosuke, et al. “Experiment on the Synthesis of Element 113” (30 July 2004). Journal of the Physical Society of Japan, 73.10, October 2004, 2593–96. DOI: 10.1143/JPSJ.73.2593.

Oganessian, Yu. Ts., et al. “Experiments on the Synthesis of Element 115.” Physical Review C, 69, 2 February 2004, 021601-1–5. American Physical Society.