https://academic.oup.

com/cid/article/31/3/734/297457

The Language of Infectious Disease: A Light-Hearted Review

Contemporary terminology related to infectious disease (ID) is a patchwork collection that
includes foreign words, slang, euphemisms, misnomers, acronyms, and a variety of other
terms referring to people, places, foods, colors, and animals. The only constant of any
language is change, and, from early concepts of contagion to modern day “ID speak,” the
language of the field has evolved in response to new developments in the identification,
classification, epidemiology, diagnosis, and treatment of infectious agents and the associated
diseases.

This seriously light-hearted review of the ID language is in large part a personal perspective
and commentary. Resources used include several dictionaries, the International Classification
of Diseases, Ninth Revision (ICD-9), various other references as noted, and the author's
experience and imagination. This review is written for the general ID community, but it may
also be of interest to medical students, international medical graduates, ivy-covered professors
in ivory towers, and aspiring authors of the “hot zone” type of infection-related fiction.

Terms and expressions related to infection are conceived, go on to mature, and may
eventually die of causes varying from disuse atrophy to political incorrectness. It seems
appropriate to begin by paying due respect to a few deceased terms and expressions now
found only in dictionaries, historical reviews, archival medical writings, and, surprisingly, the
ICD-9. The latter includes many archaic terms—such as pseudoscarlatina, Chicago disease,
Whitmore's bacillus, uta, and Posada-Wernicke disease—that have no meaning for most ID
physicians in practice.
“Social disease” is a euphemism for an STD, and most of the social diseases in turn have
multiple other common names. Syphilis was called “the great pox” as it ravaged Europe in the
years after Columbus's return from the New World. An international blame game was in full
force at the time, because syphilis was also called “the French disease” by the English and
Germans, “the Spanish pox” by the French, “the Polish disease” by the Russians, “the Turkish
disease” by the Persians, and so on [3]. “Lues” is a more formal name for syphilis that is most
often used when speaking about this infection at the bedside of the patient for whom the
diagnosis is being considered.