Haematology

Nineteen entries in stands l’emofilia, and it is the ending that repays a stop. Everywhere outside the hospital, -philia names an attachment: a bibliophile loves books, l’anglofilia is a fondness for things English, la francofilia for things French. Read the medical word with that dictionary in hand and it says « love of blood », which is the reverse of what the condition is about, since the whole trouble is that the blood will not clot. Inside medicine the same Greek philía has been given a narrower job: it names an affinity, a leaning of tissue towards something. A cell that takes up a dye has an affinity for it, and that is what l’eosinofilia counts. Blood that leans towards clotting is la trombofilia, two entries earlier in this same list. Blood that leans towards bleeding took the same ending in the eighteen-hundreds and has kept it since. So the rule is worth carrying whole: outside, the suffix is a taste; inside, it is a direction — which way something tends, never what it likes.