Dermatology in Portuguese

The eighteenth entry is a pomada de corticoide, and the middle word is the one to leave behind. English owns « pomade », it came from the same source, and it is not the word for this. A pomade in English is a scented grease for the hair: it sits on a barber’s shelf, it holds a parting, and it has no medical life whatsoever. What a chemist hands over in a tube is « an ointment » — greasy, occlusive, and the standard rendering of a pomada everywhere on this page. So a pomada de corticoide is « the corticosteroid ointment », and a base da pomada, a little above it, is « the ointment base ». The mistake is worth naming because it is invisible: « corticosteroid pomade » is a phrase a reader will parse, picture wrongly, and never query. Two neighbours are worth settling at the same time. « A cream » is the lighter, water-containing preparation, o creme; and « a salve » exists but sounds either old or American, so the plain word on a British tube is « ointment », and nothing else.