Health and the body

What holds these lists together

The words you seldom need and then need at once — in the surgery, at the chemist’s, in A&E and later in the test results. The body brings a construction of its own. Spanish does not say that your head hurts; it says the head hurts you, with the article where English puts «my»: me duele la cabeza. Learn the pattern here and you have it for gustar and many other verbs. The clinical terms are built from Latin and look easier than they are, and everyday words mislead too. In Spain estar constipado means having a cold, and somebody who is merely embarrassed should not say estoy embarazada: it means pregnant.

For example: el cuerpo (the body), el centro de salud (the health centre), la urgencia (the emergency), el horario de consulta (the opening hours of the practice), el número de emergencias (the number to ring when something happens), el principio activo (the substance that does the work)

Spread across the levels

The category runs across the levels — it is an area, not a difficulty. If you practise it, you can also choose a level at the top of the practice page and then get only the part that sits there.