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Samuel Vaisrub, MD

JAMA. 1978;240(12):1272.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

Having cast many stones at those who report "first," allegedly previously unreported observations, I now find myself living in a glass house. "A Dithyramb to the Dictionary" (239:2159, 1978) contains a transgression to which N. G. Demy of East Hampton, NY, calls attention in an eloquent letter. The letter reads:

I beg to differ with your editorial that "No muse of the dictionary resided on Parnassus" and that "No poet dedicated an ode to a dictionary" or that "No chorus chanted paeans to a lexicographer." Franklin Pierce Adams did all that, and since you are unlikely to find him on the shelves of a library today, I give you his paeans of praise in "A Lexicographer's Love-Poem" in "Lines on Reading Frank J. Wilstach's 'A Dictionary of Similes' " (which should delight those interested in metaphors), and "To a Thesaurus."

As for me, I'm with Alice who protested "What good is . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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