My dog had to see the vet yesterday, and the vet declared that we’d have to let the wound “heal by second intention,” meaning that it was not possible to sew up or close the wound, and we’d have to keep it loosely bandaged and let it heal from the inside out.
I’d never heard the phrase “heal by second intention” before this. Does anyone know where it came from?
Well, I don’t know the exact origin, but, as a veterinarian, I know what he’s talking about.
There are different types of wound healing. The type that occurs when two skin edges are sutured together is called “primary intention” or primary healing. Basically, the skin of the wound edges grows together right away.
Sometimes a wound can’t be sutured together because too much skin is lost or because the wound is infected. When this happens a wound heals by “second intention.” In this instance a granulation tissue bed forms first - this is a complex of capillaries mainly. Healing occurs when 2 things happen - the surrounding skin contracts pulling the wound edges together, and new epithelium grows over the granulation tissue bed.
Dogs have so much extra skin, they usually heal very easily no matter how large the wound or were on the body it occurs. Horses have much tighter skin, particularly over their extremeties, and sometimes the skin doesn’t contract enought to allow the wound to heal. Then the granulation tissue goes haywire and begins to grow. This is technically termed exuberant granulation tissue, but the horseman’s term for the condition is “proud flesh.”
The phrase is “healing by secondary intention” and it’s a common medical term which means healing of an open wound from the base upwards, by laying down new tissue. This process is used when the wound is too old or infected or ragged to be closed with sutures.
The term has been in use since before I’ve been in medicine, which is over 25 years now. It’s derived from the terminology used to describe the three categories of wound healing.
That’s interesting. My dog, who is a greyhound, had a wound on the lower part of his leg, where the skin is very thin and tight, and his leg thin and bony. Apparently he had skidded and wore away an opening that could not be stitched up.
But I’m still wondering about the grammatical origin of the phrase “second intention.” I can understand the “second” part of it, but the “intention” part sounds kind of medieval. I’m interested in the historical origin of the phrase.
A sadly “Modern-Englishy” translation of the Latin “intentionem,” which in this case is better translated as “attempt” or “effort” – i.e., “primam intentionem” means “first try,” and “secundam intentionem” means “second try.”
I am no Latin scholar, this is just what I found on Google. If I had to translate the phrase “healing per secundam intentionem,” I’d say “healing by the secondary mechanism.”
Maybe one of the docs can explain this.
All wounds leave a scar. Why is it that sometimes (although not always) a wound healed by secondary intention leaves less of a scar than one that was stitched/stapled? Even if that wound was nasty-horrible infected and oozing pus for a month or two?
I think nametag offers a pretty well-reasoned explanation in his post just after yours.
The OED shows first intention cited in a medical sense as early as 1543 and second intention from 1767, although it’s not illogical to assume they both existed earlier.
The terms probably came first in philosophy, by my reading of the OED:
You may be in for a long haul…
Last June they operated on my stomach and have left it to heal by secndary intention and that damn thing is *still *healing.
Get better soon, Khadaji!
It looks like the online OED uses tiny image files to display special characters, instead of Unicode. So when copying and pasting, those characters are lost because they’re not computer text.
The actual Arabic words are ma‘qūl and ma‘qūlāt. It means something that the intelligence (‘aql) has understood. The word had already come to mean “intellect” in colloquial Arabic before was adopted for philosophy, but ‘aql primitively means an Arab’s corded headband that holds the headdress on and keeps it from being blown away by the wind. The ‘aql was originally a camel hobble, to keep the beast from running away. So the concept is to hold thoughts in place versus becoming scatterbrained.
When Greek philosophy was translated into Arabic in the 8th century, ‘aql was used to translate phronesis, dianoia, and nous.
The Arabic verb ‘aqala ‘to use one’s intelligence’ was used to translate the Greek verb theoreo. The passive participle of this verb, meaning “something understood” is ma‘qūl, the answer to the OP referenced by samclem.
The word ma‘qūl itself was used to translate Greek noeton, dianoeton, nooumenon, and noema. All of these are derived from nous ‘mind, intellect’.
Cite: Soheil M. Afnan, Philosophical Terminology in Arabic and Persian (Leiden: Brill, 1964)
Now I’m wishing I had splurged and bought a good classical Greek dictionary like Liddell. I know enough Greek to see the basic meaning these words all share, but not their fine nuances. Diogenes the Cynic knows Greek, I wish he could help out here. The meaning of noumenon in philosophy is clear: something apprehended by the mind rather than the senses. It’s also a passive participle form of a Greek verb, corresponding to the form used in Arabic. I would say that ma‘qūl makes for a very accurate translation of noumenon.