‘Cesarean section’; ‘blue bag’

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | Dear Editor:

I've read that the term "cesarean section'' comes from the belief that Julius Caesar was delivered in this way. What is the evidence that the term came from the belief and not the belief from the term?

_I. M., Dallas

Dear I. M.:

The name "Caesar'' is a cognomen, a nickname given to one member of a Roman clan and borne by his descendants as a kind of surname. No one knows who the original Caesar was, but his descendants within his clan, the Julii, continued to use his cognomen and formed a major branch of the clan.

According to a legend related by the Roman naturalist Pliny, the first Caesar was so called because he was cut from the womb of his dying mother (in Latin, "a caeso matris utero''), "Caesar'' supposedly being a derivative of the verb "caedere,'' "to cut.'' This etymology is dubious, but the name "Caesar'' has continued to be associated with surgery to remove a child that cannot be delivered naturally.

Evidence for the belief that Julius Caesar, the most famous bearer of the cognomen, was himself delivered in this way dates from as early as 1540, but there is no authority for this notion in ancient sources. Moreover, Julius Caesar's mother lived long after his birth - unlikely if she had undergone such an operation, which few women would have survived in those days. The earliest record we have for "cesarean section'' used in English dates from 1615.

You can easily see from these dates why it's said that the term "cesarean section'' comes from the belief about Caesar's birth, and not, to throw in a little more Latin, vice versa.

___

Dear Editor:

In one of Beatrix Potter's lesser-known works, "The Tale of Little Pig Robinson,'' I came across the term "blue bag.'' My unabridged dictionary gives the definition as "a barrister's brief bag.'' I seriously doubt that's what Aunt Dorcas and Aunt Porcas were sending Pig Robinson to town for. Can you tell me what this "blue bag'' is?

-- P. H., St. Louis

Dear P. H.:

Beatrix Potter's "blue bag'' is not, as one might at first assume, a bag that is blue; here, the word "blue'' is a variant of the noun "bluing.'' Bluing is a preparation used in laundering to brighten white cotton and linen fabrics. What Pig Robinson's aunts needed from town was a bag which contained bluing. In Potter's time this "blue'' came in the form of a cake, which was placed inside a cotton flannel bag that was swished around in the laundry rinse water. Goodholme's Domestic Cyclopedia, an American publication of 1885, says "ultramarine wash-blue comes in little balls'' and "is highly prized.'' It instructs the user to put the blue in a bag of string cotton five inches deep and three wide, with a string tied very tight around the neck of the bag.

Most of our sources for the term "blue bag'' are British, and none of them are more recent than the 1950s, which is not surprising since bluing on both sides of the Atlantic has been mostly replaced by laundry detergents that incorporate whiteners. Black's Domestic Dictionary, published in London in 1920, entered "blue water'' between the entries for "bloaters'' and "boiled puddings,'' with the advice to keep the blue bag in a jar because if it "were put down just anywhere it would leave its mark behind.'' Though Potter's story is set in the 19th century, it was published in 1930, and presumably she expected the young parents who read it to their children, if not the children themselves, to understand the term "blue bag'' then. As late as 1953, the Welsh poet Dyland Thomas wrote of a "bluebagged bay,'' apparently likening the color of the bay to that of rinse water with bluing.

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