Abstract

This note uses an analysis of Broussais's objection to medical ontology to suggest why Broussais's neologism οντοι is derived not from οντα but from a conflation of οντα and the plural of ογκος. For Broussais medical ontology, in contrast to philosophical ontology, always refers to abstract entities alleged to explain sensible symptoms, ογκοι, in the sense of indivisible particles in the writings of Lucretius and Epicurus, are such particles; οντα are not