Hospital and diagnosis

The first entry on this list is l’anamnesi, and it is worth opening the word up, because a very familiar English one is hiding inside it. It comes from the Greek anámnēsis, a calling back to mind, built on the root mnē-, memory, with ana- in front of it meaning back or up again. Now set that beside « amnesia », which is the same root carrying a different prefix: the a- of « anonymous » and « atypical », the one that cancels. So l’anamnesi and « amnesia » are near opposites assembled from the same piece, and what separates them is two letters at the start. The same mnē- turns up in « mnemonic », and in « amnesty », which is a forgetting granted by law rather than suffered by a head. None of that makes the Italian word learned or rare, though. L’anamnesi is the plain business of asking a patient what has happened until now, it opens almost every consultation, and the word an English ward uses for the very same thing is simply « the history ».