Anaesthesia

One word on this list does five jobs in ordinary German, and the anaesthetic room uses only one of them. Die Aufklärung is the Enlightenment in a history book, the solving of a case in a police report (die Aufklärung des Einbruchs), the talk about the facts of life that parents keep postponing, and reconnaissance in an army manual. Before an operation it is none of these: it is the conversation in which a doctor explains what will be done and what can go wrong, so that the patient’s signature means something. The verb underneath, aufklären, simply makes something clear, and each sense follows from what is being cleared up — a century, a crime, a child, a battlefield or a risk. On a ward, Ich bin aufgeklärt worden is therefore a statement about consent, and das Aufklärungsgespräch is a legal duty rather than a courtesy. These pages explain words and give no medical advice.