Dead Languages Indeed

"[T]he great bulk of current biomedical vocabulary is derived from classical Greek or Latin. Indeed, much of the latter is derived from the former. A survey of nearly 50,000 biomedical terms (Butler RF. Sources of the medical vocabulary. J Med Educ. 1980; 55:128) reveals that 58.5% come from Greek alone, 21.8% from Latin alone, and 13.2% combine Greek and Latin roots (only 2.9% originated in English)."

-from the Introduction to Haubrich, Medical Meanings: A Glossary of Word Origins (Second Edition), p. x.