Pretty big mumps outbreak in Iowa. I had the mumps as a baby, according to my mother, as did most of my siblings (in fact, we had to leave our trip to Florida early because the twins, who had been left with my grandparents, spread the disease to Grandpa). But past 1970 or so, I haven’t really heard much about people actually having the disease.
Of course, the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine proved to be a bit unreliable in the late 80s, when a number of college campuses, mine included, had measles outbreaks. Apparently, the vaccine that was given in the early 70s wasn’t as good as previous batches, so people who’d been vaccinated with that batch had to get a new set of shots (I didn’t; I apparently got one of the last good batches in 1969).
But the real reason I chose to write about this is that you just don’t get disease names like “mumps” anymore. Or “rickets,” or “the bends” or “grippe” or “consumption” or “chicken pox.” Eh, “bird flu” isn’t bad, but I guess it’s just not Anglo-Saxon enough.
What’s your favorite disease name?
Anything beginning with trichto-. Awful, I know, but I like the way it sounds.
I have, however, always been bothered by vaginosis. It seems like it should be vaginitis, just for the aesthetics of the thing.
There’s also vaginismis, which I learned about in college sex class.
Schigellosis is a good one, as is shingles.
The recent outbreaks in “old” diseases such as the Iowa mumps outbreak may be linked to an increase in parents seeking exemptions from vaccinating their children for fear of mercury poisoning. Some suspect vaccines preserved with mercury have contributed to the significant increase in cases of Autism, with the MMR vaccine being the prime offender. If too many people opt out of vaccinations, the stability of the herd immunity weakens.
But its a tough call. You don’t want to expose your child to something that could cause autism. But you don’t want to leave them unprotected against potentially fatal diseases. Its a crap shoot.
It would be lovely if the vaccinations were all mercury-free, but the Bush-era regulations have been slow to push this. The party line is that the mercury argument has no basis. Except for that pesky autism epidemic.
Flu shots still have mercury in them. Even without the threat of autism, I don’t want mercury in my children or myself for that matter.
Go here for arguments from both sides on this issue: http://www.autismlink.com/info/mmr.php
Oh, and my favorite disease of yore is: female hysteria
And are flu shots of any real value?
You had mumps, too, and so did Mike, right?
Flu shots important? Maybe not if you are a healthy adult. But if you are old or young or ill, you are more susceptible to flu so they are recommended. Or if you live with the old, the young or the ill. So most doctors advise them for young children. Who have just coincidentally had a series of vaccines. And kids these days are required to have many more vaccines than we ever did. So their accumulated mercury intake will be much greater than we had as kids.
And most of these kids have parents who have no personal knowledge of things like mumps or measles or rubella so they just don’t “get” how bad they are. So they are opting out in record numbers.
Yes, I had the mumps. We all did. I also had mumps encephalitis. Sleeping sickness caused my mumps. I went to sleep for 2 days straight. Which can be fatal. These diseases are very serious.
Oh, and I had the great fortune of having to have to repeat my MMR in college because the pediatrician’s records were lost in a fire. That was fun.
Oh, and here’s a good website: http://www.putchildrenfirst.org/
My very favorite medical word is “idiopathic.” What it means is “we really have no idea why this strange thing is happening to your body, but we’re doctors and must pretend that we’re omnisicent, so we’re going to call it ‘idiopathic’ instead of saying ‘we don’t have the slightest clue what’s wrong with you.’” Idiopathic is the fancy, Latin-y way of saying “beats me.”
I think my favorite disease name is “goiter.” There’s just something good about the “oi” sound.
Proably a tie between whooping cough and scarlet fever. But whooping cough has a slight edge, because I’ve had that one and can vouch for the accuracy of the onomatopoea.
There is no credible evidence which suggests that mercury or thimerosal cause autism. (From the CDC and Institutes of Medicine.) There’s a good bit more in the professional literature. I’ll see if I can find some non-subscription links.
Human monkey pox! Best disease name ever.
Oooh oooh, scurvy!
This question is just asking for us to play Oregon Trail . . .
I’ve been hearing that word far too often lately. It goes nicely with “chronic suppurative acute otitis media”. (Can *you* say that five times fast?)
I’m going to have to go with monkey pox, which I assume is something like chicken pox but involves a fez, a vest, cymbals and possibly pants (unless the hippo stole them).
In general, “pox” is a very good word.
Here’s some ones I like:
Trypanosomiasis (just rolls off of the tongue)
Anthrax (it’s such a strong word)
Rocky Mountain spotted fever (sounds like something someone just made up after tripping on ‘shrooms)
(anything caused by) Coxsackie virus infection + Sloppy pronounciation = *Snicker*
Linnaeus, Rocky Mountain spotted fever is made even more awesome by the fact that Laura on Little House on the Prairie had it, and still-irresponsible Mr. Edwards had to be the one to take care of her, because he’d already had it, and he was thus proved to be a Worthy Man.
Oooh, too many to count! It’s late, so my medical vocabulary is shot, but I’ll try:
Pemphigus — a spectrum of auto-immune diseases. The one that our foster cat has is pempigus foliaceus. That would be where his immune system has decided that the stuff that causes skin cells to actually stick together is the enemy. So, pustules, blisters, and skin sloughing — yaaay. (Yes, he is on medication. So far so good!)
Scurvy/rickets/beri-beri — awesome words for some really awful diseases. Just the right thing to convince the kids they really do need to eat right!
Herpes Zoster — it’s just an interesting word combination, y’know? I believe this is the one that can cause shingles, but I could be wrong. Late. Vocab and knowledge not accessable.
Varicella zoster — Also just neat word combination. Just the word “zoster”. May be the one that causes shingles. I forget and am too tired to look it up right now. Ahh, wiki says that herpes zoster is the re-activation of varicella zoster, VZ being the technical term for chicken pox. (What? You think I could just let that one lie without checking it? Nope — too obsessive.)
Last but best:
Acanthamoeba — not a disease, per se, but an organism, an actual amoeba, that can get into your eyes and can cause blindness. They particularly like soft contact lens wearers that go swimming in “wild” lakes or get splashed with ditch water. They LOVE the anaerobic environment that soft contacts tend to produce in the eye (well, cornea, actually). They get right down into the nerve pathways in the eye and reproduce, causing *intense* pain, photophobia, and potentially blindness. The thing that creeps me out the most, tho’, is — it’s amoeba. Amoebas! Tiny Living Things! In! Your! Eyes! AAAAAAAAugh!
Oddly, no one ever wants to talk about that one…
I always liked Dysentery. Words with a “dys” suffix are generally cool.
And, of course, I meant “prefix”, not “suffix”.
Your disagnosis is not too much off, however the MMR vaccines have never contained thimerosal, which is the preservant containing mercury. There is a big mercury-autism link movement in the US, but there is also a big MMR-autism link movement in and outside the US. This is a big problem.
phlebitis.
just say it. it sounds ridiculous. i laugh at my friend who has it.
I had min-measles (despite being vachinated for measles), rubella (or german measles) and whooping cough. But no mumps thank god.
For me, nothing beats PUPPP Syndrome (pruritic urticarial papules and plaques of pregnancy). Except megadoses of corticosteriod, that is.
Favorite olde-tyme disease: “dropsy”
Favorite tongue-twister: “phlebitis”
Consumption, as a word, has nothing on one of the other names for the disease: phthisis. Go on, say it. You know you want to.
Then there’s strangury and, not Anglo-Saxon but nicely descriptive, lupus erythmatosus – poetically interpreted, the disease of the red wolf.
Impetigo
Conjuntivitis / pink eye (both the real and nick name are good)
Definitely whooping cough…people look at you like you have the plague when you say it. Besides, the louder, more dramatic way you *have* to say it for people to understand you (usually the second time around b/c they didn’t believe you at first), really packs a a punch…as if all that coughing weren’t enough.
First, let me say, I am sorry that I went off on the mercury tangent on this. But when I hear mumps, my first thought isn’t “funny”.
The thing that scares me the most is that the mercury-vaccination-autism link controversy, whether having a basis or not, is causing people to shy away from vaccinations, which is creating a whole other very serious problem as we are seeing in Iowa.
And while the argument is that there is no conclusive evidence that mercury causes autism, there is a whole population of parents of children with autism that would beg to differ and don’t feel like their concerns are being heard. In my son’s school of 400 students, there are about 30 kids in a self-contained classroom for severely autistic children. And that doesn’t count the higher-functioning kids that are mainstreamed. In the meantime, when I was in school, we never heard of autism.
Something is afoot.
As for me, I’d like to see something that says injecting mercury into children (or adults) is absolutely safe (autism or any other outcome). Because its a neurotoxin and shoot that doesn’t sound safe to me. During pregnancy they told me not to eat salmon. Then they wanted to inject my tiny baby with mercury. Hmmm. What’s a girl to believe?
In the meantime, I’ve insisted on single-dose, preservative free vaccines for my kids but as was the case this past fall when we went for flu shots, they are not available. So we opted out and took our chances with the flu. And many others are staying away from vaccines altogether (even though in most cases the mercury has been out for a few years now), just to be safe until someone figures out what the heck has caused the dramatic rise in autism.
Sure. Doctors are getting better at recognizing autism, or even jumping to conclusions of autism when they’re not merited. The whole idea that one could have the “high-functioning” version of a syndrome characterized by its drastically negative effect on function is a little ridiculous. You could just as well say that I have a “high functioning” cold – no fever, no congestion, no swollen glands, no headache.
But in that case, exactly what’s wrong with me?
There’s this science called “chemistry.” From it we know that many materials are “elements”, and that these elements combine in different ratios to form different molecules that have different chemical properties. In other words this leads to the conclusion that there’s a fairly large difference between injecting a microscopic amount of a molecule whose chemical structure includes mercury, and chugging pure mercury by the glassful like Robert Hooke used to do for his ulcers.
http://tinyurl.com/hwp8g
“Absolutely safe”? Proof is for liquor and mathematics; you won’t get it from science. But it does pretty much seem to be the case that ethylmercury perservatives don’t seem to be causing autism.
“The whole idea that one could have the “high-functioning” version of a syndrome characterized by its drastically negative effect on function is a little ridiculous.”
High-functioning refers to cognitive ability in the individual with autism. There is a wide spectrum of cognitive abilities among people with autism, just as is in the “typical” population. Autism is a neuro/sensory disorder. You can be high-functioning in a cognitive sense and have reduced ability to cope with your environment. Its a very frustrating combination for the individual.
What Kate said, particularly since autism refers to a spectrum, not a single simple syndrome. It’s also true that “high-functioning” is used to refer to individuals within any cohort who are relatively high-functioning. Since Kate is absolutely right that some autism-spectrum people are mainstreamed, your lexical argument is wrong.
zuzu:
Finally slipped the ole trolly, huh.
How ’bout dengue?
Yeah, I was going to suggest scurvy [Just picked up a book on it from the library. Actually, there appear to be two recent books on the disease: "Scurvy" and "Limeys"]
And now I’m remembering an old George Carlin routine about the herpes epidemic and how it was good for New York, because New Yorkers hadn’t had a good disease they could mispronounce since “tuhBOIculosis” — HOYpees…
Heh.
Reading through the rest of the comments:
“Herpes Zoster” sounds like a spammer name.
And speaking of ideopathic, my husband has arthralgia. Not arthritis, but just otherwise-undiagnosed joint pain.
This isn’t a disease, and they don’t cause disease, but they’re my favorite: bot flies.
Bonebreak Fever
cooler than the official ‘dengue’
My understanding is that the recent college outbreaks of diseases like measles has to do with the changes in vaccination scheduling.
Essentially, most vaccinations should be given when the baby is older, after the immune system is more developed. But lots of parents cease to be rigorous about regular pediatric appointments after infancy. So the AMA (or the equivalent pediatric organization, I forget which) changed its recommendations, making vaccination much earlier. The unfortunate side effect is the immunity doesn’t take quite as well and only lasts about fifteen years. So instead of preventing these diseases, they’re pushed into an older population, where the disease is likelier to be severe. Measles at five is no big deal compared to measles at eighteen.
My favorite disease name is chicken pox, because I love misinterpretations of language. Second is whooping cough because it’s fun to say and because of the onamonopoeia [sp].
Least favorite is eosinphilic myalgia syndrome because it takes so long to explain.
Vaccinations are early and are more in number than when we were babies. Which is good (protecting us from more diseases) and bad (lots, lots more shots). Some parents choose to slow the schedule down on their own in an effort reap the more long-term benefit, reduce the unwanted side effects, and spare the child the discomfort of multiple shots in one day.
But this is not always possible, since certified child care facilities usually require that vaccinations be “up to date” which means in line with the federal regs. So if you must go back to work, you often forfeit many of your childcare options if you’re not in compliance.
Yup–scurvy’s good, but don’t forget gout. I get the image of the old guy with the big red nose with his gouty foot up on a pillowed footstool…
Dropsy, ague.
We’re having a mumps outbreak here in Wisconsin too.
Which is understandable. But that means that the CDC types are in the position of trying to tell these people that their concerns are wholly unsupported by the medical literature, that they (the parents) are increasing the risk that these diseases will return in full force, and that, essentially, they’re being irrational. That’s a damn difficult message to deliver and it doesn’t help resolve the problem.
I think everyone should be vaccinated not just for their own self interest, but because I have socialist leanings and think that individuals have obligations to the wider community, especially in a public health setting.
Incidentially, I’m still partial to Legionnaire’s Disease. It makes me think of little regiments of marching microbes.
(The phrase cavorting beasties also has a special place in my heart.)
Kuru. It sounds like something that someone made up, but it’s a real disease. A nasty one, as it happens. But don’t worry about catching it unless you eat brains (It existed only in canibalistic tribes in IIRC New Guinea. I think it’s now extinct.)
Kuru. It sounds like something that someone made up, but it’s a real disease. A nasty one, as it happens. But don’t worry about catching it unless you eat brains (It existed only in canibalistic tribes in IIRC New Guinea. I think it’s now extinct.)
I’m a plague fan, myself. Bubonic is fun to say, though that’s not the contagious one. Pneumonic plague is what you get when you ignore bubonic plague, and that one spreads rather quickly. Plague and Pox are both excellent words. Or the name of a show at a renaissance faire…
I had the mumps when I was 5. I also had the booster when I went back to college in the 80s because no one could find my doctor in California. Mumps is not a little thing that you put up with over a weekend. It sucks enough that I remember it when most of my early childhood is a blur. It just hit parts of Illinois and I’m hoping it doesn’t spread on campus.
Try Respectful Insolence – it’s quite a theme with him
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/
Oooh, thanks for the link, firefalluk. It looks like a great read.
@evil-fizz
I am in absolute agreement with you about vaccinations. They are so important. To our society as a whole and to each individual.
But I cringe a tiny bit when I hear “irrational” describing parents using the autism crisis as a reason to opt out.
I guess what it comes down to is that whenever I hear the words “there is no medical evidence to support that” I can’t help but hear a “yet” coming along down the road. Because having no evidence is different than disproving.
best topic ever! zuzu, you are total awesomeness.
nothing says class more than victorian-era rickets or scurvy. so very chic. for sheer the sheer menace of their names: neoplasm and scabies. chlamydia would have to be ultimate pick, though. it sounds like an exotic garden flower.
I’d loved to have been a fly on the wall in the scriptwriters’ offices for that one.
Yaws. Yaws is a great name for a disease. And then there’s Moebius syndrome, which sounds as if it should twist your body around but really has to do with facial nerves.
I thought Laura had malaria (in Little House on the Prairie), since she got it from mosquitos (or was it from eating watermelon??)
It’s the fear of mercury poisoning that keeps parents from having their children immunized? I didn’t know the reason. Does anyone have any idea how many of the people that are currently coming down with mumps never got the vaccine?
Oh, and my favorite disease name is scoliosis. I don’t know, it just seems to roll of the tongue…..
Extinct? Nope. Kuru is just what the Papua New Guineans called it; Western researchers called it that ‘cuz they didn’t know (at the time) what it really was. Today, we know that it’s the same as Creutzfeld-Jakob (pronounced croyts-feld yah-kohb) disease. AKA, the human form of Bovine Spongiform Encephelopathy, aka Mad Cow. Add C-J and BSE to the list of cool names.
Ooh, ooh, “otorrhea”. Technically a symptom, not a disease, but it’s a great way to gross people out when your ears are draining.
Ooh, ooh, “otorrhea”. Technically a symptom, not a disease, but it’s a great way to gross people out when your ears are draining.
Sharon, it’s not fear of mercury poisoning directly. It’s the fear that mercury based preservatives might cause autism that leads parents to avoid vaccination.
I’m with Reba — for some reason I love to say bubonic plague. Plus there’s the whole ring-around-the-rosy link that’s just sooo cool.
And there’s ebola and malaria; crappy diseases but cool names.
I used to work with a degreed, licensed health professional who was convinced that her child would not need to be vaccinated because she had regular chiropractic appointments. I figured if her education hadn’t taught her this was incorrect, who was I to tell her she was wrong? Her kid never got sick but that was probably due to A. being homeschooled and B. other kids having had their immunizations.
I also have a friend whose child suffered a reaction to an immunization as an infant and was severely brain damaged. He finally died at 21, without ever feeding himself, talking, or being able to do anything but lie in bed.
Pretty much you pays your money and you takes your chances.
My kids were immunized because I thought it was a better bet than getting the diseases.
Shingles. Gout. The Vapors.
Hives.
Hysteria.
Galloping Crud.
And the best one of all, hands down:
“Jumping Frenchmen of Maine”
It’s what happens when you walk up behind someone and startle them, and they blurt out whatever they were thinking about. First noticed (where else) among the French population of Maine.
I WIN! heh.
The news reports I’ve seen have claimed that 75% of the people who have come down with the mumps in this outbreak have had the full two-shot series (which is now an infant vac followed by a vac at about 13/entry to high school). They’ve been requiring a teenaged MMR for girls and a teenaged measles(?)-only for boys since about the year I turned 13–17 years ago now. I think that the boys now receive the full MMR on entry to high school as well.
Schistosomiasis
oh, and
Thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura
If you like scoliosis, you’ll love lordosis and kyphosis – otherwise known as swayback and hunchback.
Good French disease names: la peste, la rage – plague and rabies, but I prefer the French names.
Transverse rectal polyp.
Inpetigo.Every summer my mom told me I’d get inpetigo(spelled as it sounds) becayse I scratched bug bites. Asperger’s Syndrome On the autism spectrum, it’s on the rise. The doctor at student health believes I have it. I don’t show subject preoccupations, like ‘real’ aspies.
God I love rickets. Especially rickets babies. In fact, when talking about someone I think is weird, I enjoy the term “rickets baby of the year.”
Ooooh! “The Vapors”! Forgot about that one. Vague enough to encompass any female trouble or minor emotional breakdown. :-)
Inpetigo sounds like lumbago, which is something I always with old ladies named Pearl.
“How’s Pearl?”
“Oh, Pearl’s lumbago is acting up on her again.”
There’s some people who question whether the “autism epidemic” exists at all – whether it’s not merely a case of diagnosis substitution. The number of children diagnosed as “mentally retarded” dropped sharply in the early 90s at the same time that the number of children diagnosed as “pervasive developmentally delayed” and “autistic spectrum” has risen steeply.
I went to school with kids called retards as a simple descriptive, not as a pejorative. There are no kids so described in my kids’ school today – what did we do to suddenly stop “mental retardation” in schoolchildren these day? Or did we just start calling them something different?
The newer diagnoses are probably more correct than the older catch-all diagnosis of mental retardation, but simply because the numbers of “learning disabled” children with the diagnosis of autism has increased does not necessarily mean that the number of actual cases of autism has increased.
I’ve got two kids diagnosed on the Autistic Spectrum, btw.
IDEA ’97 lists 13 disability categories:
Autism, Deafness, Deaf-blindness, Hearing impairment, Mental retardation, Multiple disabilities, Orthopedic impairment, Other health impairment, Serious emotional disturbance, Specific learning disability, Speech or language impairment, Traumatic brain injury, Visual impairment, including blindness. To receive special education services, one must have a documented disability and a need for services.
(See http://www.fetaweb.com/01/faqs.eligibility.htm; it may have been updated with the reauthorization but I think its the same).
So, Mental retardation and autism are both recognized. Some kids qualify for eligibility for services with 2 or more diagnoses (you can be blind and autistic, for instance). I would agree a lot of these kids were probably grouped into one lump category in the good ol’ days.
I can’t believe no one has mentioned one of my favorite diseases, both names of which are awesome. Necrotizing Fascitis, AKA, the Flesh-Eating Bacteria.
I also enjoy Creuzfeld-Jakob Disease AKA Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy AKA Mad Cow Disease AKA Kuru.
How is it that there are two diseases, both with multiple names that are all awesome, even irrespective of the names’ semantic content?
Another disease I like to say is non-Hodgkins lymphoma.
Whenever I get sick I claim the deadly ebola virus. I’m going to have to get a new one soon — I’m leaning toward the vapors.
Fifth disease. “We have measles, chicken pox, German measles, scarlet fever and, oh, this other one.” It’s like being the fifth horseman of the apocalypse.
Lauren, I recommend psittacosis. Or scrum pox. I’m considering, when ill, claiming an attack of acute anhedonia, but that only works with people who don’t have dictionaries.