Butterworths medical dictionary.
edited by Arthur Salusbury MacNalty.
- 2d ed. editor-in-chief, Macdonald Critchley.
- London ; Boston : Butterworths, 1978.
- xxxii, 1942 p. : ill. ; 28 cm.
The duties of lexicographer are arduous and exacting, but at the same time seductive, especially to one who nurse a curious fascination for words in all their vagaries. Dr. Johnson defined a lexicographer as a writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge, Drudge he may be , and certainly harmless. Indeed he is in many ways as vulnerable as an unwinged housefly. His duty entail the coaxing and cajoling of cooperating co-authors amny of them eager, others reluctant. Among the former some prove infirm of purpose. To quote Johnson again- for he was in a position to know - "the promise of authors are like the vows of lovers; made in moment of careless rapture, and subject, during the long process of fulfillment, to all kinds of unforeseen dangers and difficulties".