At the doctor and the chemist

The list for a visit nobody plans, and its fifth entry is the word that will be read wrongly. Les troubles, in the plural and in a medical sentence, are the symptoms or the disorder: des troubles digestifs, des troubles du sommeil, des troubles de la vision. English « troubles » is difficulties, worries, political unrest — never a set of symptoms; the English is « problems », « disorder » or simply « trouble » in the singular, as in « stomach trouble ». And the French singular is different again: le trouble is confusion or unease, closer to the English sense, so the number decides which language you are in. The verb helps: troubler is to cloud, to stir up — de l’eau trouble is murky water — and the symptoms are named for the clouding, not for the worry.