This is an entry in the Saturday series of Timeless & Timely called “Off the Clock.” A newsletter for word nerds. Make sure you don’t miss a single issue.
“All pain is one malady with many names.” —Antiphanes, c. 400 BC
Given the CDC has eased mask guidelines (because evidently at 1,500 deaths a day, it’s no longer a concern), I thought it was an appropriate time to look at words associated with disease.
The reality is that at some point, we need to look beyond pandemic and begin treating this as endemic — that is, simply a persistent, if uncomfortable, natural occurrence.
And that’s exactly what some diseases were to our ancestors. Afflictions, maladies, and conditions were a part of existence, and over time, they developed remedies to counter them.
Simultaneously, they also viewed more serious diseases as supernatural in origin. Spells, curses, demonic possession, an offended god or some other malevolent force entered the victim’s body and sometimes his soul. And in such cases, the “cure” was sometimes worse than the disease.
Aelius Galenus (129–216 A.D.), otherwise known as Galen, is widely considered the father of modern medicine. He was both a physician and philosopher, and he his study of the Antonine Plague gives us the first detailed view of a pandemic.
Obviously, medicine evolved over the ensuing 1,500 years (although not by much, in some cases) and there were other pandemics, including the Black Death (1346–1353) and the Great Plague of London (1665–1666), which killed a quarter of London’s population in 18 months.
Against that backdrop and keeping in mind that you’re here on Saturdays to satisfy your curiosity about words, here’s a look at some obscure medical terms of the time related to the cause of death, from London in 1632.
And if you can make it through the entire list, I’ve got a surprise for you at the end.