Pox

Pox (pronounced poks)

(1) In human & animal pathology, a disease characterized by multiple skin pustules, as smallpox, associated with the pockmarks left by the purulent skin eruptions.

(2) Historically, a reference to syphilis and sometimes to other venereal diseases (now called sexually transmitted diseases (STDs)) (archaic).

(3) In plant pathology, a disease of sweet potatoes, characterized by numerous pitlike lesions on the roots, caused by a fungus, Streptomyces ipomoea (also called soil rot and distinct from the condition root rot).

(4) In idiomatic use (usually as "a pox on (someone or something)"), an interjection to express distaste, rejection, aversion etc and thus a synonym of curse; the adjective poxy is a variation of the idea.

(5) As the acronym POx, variously Pulse Oximetry, Pressure Oxidation, Partial Oxidation, Point of Exit, Plain Old XML & Purgeable Organic Halogens.

(6) As the acronym POX (or PoX), proof of X.

Circa 1480s: A spelling variant of pocks, the plural of pock, from the plural of the Middle English pocke.  Pox in the sense of “a disease characterized by eruptive sores" emerged in the late fifteenth century, a spelling alteration of pocks & pockes (used since the late thirteenth century in this context), the plural forms of the Middle English pocke (pustule).  From the sixteenth century, it became the common word with which to refer to syphilis.  Pock (pustule raised on the surface of the body in an eruptive disease) was from the Middle English pok, from the Old English poc & pocc (pock; pustule; ulcer), from the Proto-Germanic pukkaz & pukkǭ (pock; swelling) and puh & puhh (to swell up; blow us), from the primitive Indo-European beu & bew- (to grow; swell).  It was cognate with the Middle Dutch pocke, the Dutch pok, the East Frisian pok, the dialectal German Pfoche, the Low German & German Pocke, the French pocque was also from Germanic sources.  The present participle is poxing and the past participle poxed; the noun plural is poxes.

As surnames, Pox & Pocks both long pre-dated the use in pathology and were of Germanic origin, recorded in Bavaria & Austria as a variant Of the Bavaria Böck) and the North German Beck (Baker).  Pox may in some cases have been an alternative spelling of these but is documented as a nickname for a “short man”, from the Low German Pōk (young child; Dwarf).  In some regions it may have been a Germanized form of both the Hungarian Pók and the Slovenian & Croatian Pok common in the Balkans.  In the US, Pox appears to have been an Americanized version of Pocks, most prevalent in the north-eastern states during the nineteenth century.

Coincidently, the Proto-Turkic bok means “dirt, dung” and was cognate with the Turkish bok & Chuvash пӑх (păh); in vulgar slang used predictably in the same sense as “shit” (solid excretory product evacuated from the bowel); the word persists in modern Azerbaijani.  The now idiomatic deprecatory adjective poxy entered English in the late nineteenth century as terms of distaste and disapprobation, having been in the medical literature sin 1853 in the sense of “infected with pox; pocked-marked”.

The noun pock-mark (pockmark later prevailed) dates from the 1670s and was used to describe “the scar or pit left by a pustule" after an infection, particularly after smallpox where the effects were most severe and it was noted as a verb & adjective after 1756.  The earlier word in this sense was the mid-fifteenth century pokbrokyn.  Pock-marked was used by astronomers to refer to the craters visible on the surface of the moon.

Cow-pox (also cowpox), was a disease of cattle, noted from the 1780s and the fluid of the vesicles made it transmissible to humans.  It played an important role in the history of inoculation because it was noted milkmaids (with much exposure to cowpox) enjoyed an almost complete immunity to smallpox.  Chicken-pox was first described circa 1730 and the name is thought either an allusion to the mildness of the condition (compared to syphilis (the pox) or smallpox) or it being most associated with children, or the resemblance of the lumps on the skin to chick-peas.  In medical Latin, the circa 1765 varicella (chicken-pox) was an irregular diminutive of variola, the adjectival form varicellous.  Smallpox, the acute, highly contagious disease and frequently (fatal in a quarter to a third of unvaccinated cases) deadly disease was first so named in the 1510s, as small pokkes, which distinguished the symptoms from the great pox (syphilis).

The famous exchange…

“You sir shall die either on the gallows or of the pox (ie from a STD)”.

“That sir, will depend on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress”.

.. has been attributed to many over the last two centuries odd so the ultimate source is uncertain but the first known record of what may anyway have been an apocryphal exchange appears to have been published in 1784 the London periodical The European Magazine.  Supposedly, protagonist and antagonist were the fourth Earl of Sandwich (1718-1792) and Samuel Foote (1720-1777) who met at a dinner held in his house by Sir Francis Blake Delaval. (1727–1771).

In the decades which followed, frequently the tale was re-told, sometimes with different participants (although Lord Sandwich was often named) and although occasionally embellished, what’s more interesting is that euphemisms and niceties were sometimes adopted; “the halter” replacing references to nooses and gallows and “p-x and “certain disease” substituting for pox.  Whether the changes reflected editorial taste or changes in what readers thought acceptable in print isn’t clear but by the early nineteenth century the anecdote was published with the punch-line but not the setup sentence.  That may however have been because, being well-known, by then a mere allusion was probably more funny still, a technique used to effect in the House of Commons as recently as 1968.  Whether or not the exchange ever happened or between who will never be known with certainty but the rejoinder is of such voltairesque quality it’s been attributed to more than half-a-dozen political notables.

Monkeypox

Little political energy could be summoned in the West to deal with climate change while it appeared to afflict only Africans, Arabs, Asians and animals (those inhabiting the places Mr Trump would have called “shithole countries”).  It took Europe & North America roasting, flooding and burning to focus minds.  Similarly, monkeypox (a zoonotic virus in the genus Orthopoxvirus) although for decades endemic in parts of Africa, attracted little interest in the West until outbreaks in 2022 and most people had probably never heard of it until a rapid spread of cases began to be reported in the UK, Europe and the US.  On 23 July 2022, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) with cases reported in 77 countries and territories, similar declaration in the past issued for Swine flu, polio, Ebola, Zika and Covid-19.

Monkeypox movement out of Africa 2022 tracked by the US Center for Disease Control (CDC).

Monkeypox gained its name in 1958 when scientists in Denmark isolated the virus in laboratory monkeys in 1958, when two outbreaks of the disease occurred in monkey colonies.  It’s since become clear that a number of rodents are much more efficient vectors of transmission and the virus is neither exclusive too nor most prevalent in monkey populations but, in the way of these things, the name stuck.  This is not a new phenomenon; the famous Spanish flu linked to the pandemic of 1918-1920 picked up the name only because cases there were reported in the press in 1918 whereas news of those already detected in the US, Europe and the UK were suppressed by wartime censorship which wasn’t applied in neutral Spain.  Another case is Rubella which came to be known as “German” measles, simply because it was scientists in that country which identified and first describe the cause and there are many more, most associated with countries not the source of the disease which bears the name.  It’s not known where and where a person first was infected but a human case of monkeypox was first documented in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in 1970.  Since then, the DRC has always recorded the majority of infections although between then and 2022, it had spread to a number of African countries, cases beyond the continent rare until 2022.

Example of regional variations in reported transmission: Nigeria 2017-2022.

Other associations linked to the name monkeypox have also become controversial and the WHO announced it is to receive a new name, noting comments from scientists and public health officials that the current name is "discriminatory and stigmatizing" and it’s also inaccurate to name versions of the virus after parts of Africa.  Accordingly, the WHO has already renamed two clades (from the Ancient Greek κλάδος (kládos) (shoot, branch, family) of the virus to avoid the stigma associated with geographical names: The variant formerly known as “Congo Basin'' will now be referred to as “Clade I” and the “West Africa” variant will be known as “Clade II”.  The first suggestion of a new name is hMPXV, to denote the human version of the monkeypox virus and rather than anything geographic locations, letters and numbers should be used, based on order of discovery. In that system, the lineage behind the current international outbreak would be dubbed hMPXV-B1.  Some local authorities have acted preemptively, Chicago public health authorities for example using the bland “MPV”.  Whatever it ends up being called however, in the West, like COVID-19, monkeypox may be here to stay.

Take-off point of 2022 spread charted by the Lancet.

One aspect of the epidemiology of monkeypox in the West is that some 95% of those diagnosed are gay or bi-sexual men (“men who have sex with men” now the preferred and most accurate terminology).  Activists from the relative LGBTQQIAAOP faction are among those advocating a change of name although this is unlikely to remove the stigmatization based on the rate of transmission among men who have sex with men; presumably a stigmatization associated with hMPXV-B1 (or whatever) must be thought less offensive than one linked with monkeypox, probably because  an alpha-numeric string is a step removed from any link with animals and thus the slur of bestiality.  In the 1980s, that was one of the complaints once it was revealed HIV/AIDS was probably a mutated monkey virus from Africa and, even in the pre-internet era, unsubstantiated theories soon circulated that the entry of the virus into the human system was linked to men having sex with monkeys, a slur on both African men and the gay community who at the point constituted the bulk of infections, almost all as a result of sexual contact.  The consensus now is that HIV/AIDS entered human circulation (perhaps even as long ago as the nineteenth century) because of blood-blood mixing while monkeys were being butchered as part of the bush-meat trade.  The monkeypox vector may have been the same.

Naming virus species is the responsibility of the International Committee on the Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) (the expert group which brought us COVID-19) but the WHO has decided to ask for the public’s help, announcing an “…open consultation for a new disease name for monkeypox.  Anyone wishing to propose new names can do so”.  A portal will soon be provided.

Pit

Pit (pronounced pit)

(1) A naturally formed or excavated hole or cavity in the ground.

(2) A covered or concealed excavation in the ground, serving as a trap for animals.

(3) In extractive mining, an excavation made in exploring for or removing a mineral deposit (also known (at scale) as “open-cut” as opposed to “underground” (although in casual use sometime used also of the mineshafts used in underground operations.  It can in mining slang also refer to an entire mine site, regardless of the mode of extraction.

(4) The stone of a fruit (cherry, peach, plum etc) and technically, the hard, inner layer (the endocarp) of certain drupes.

(5) The abode of evil spirits and lost souls; hell; the depths of Hades.

(6) In slang (as “the pits”) an extremely unpleasant, boring, or depressing place, condition, person, etc; the absolute worst (used also as a clipping of armpits).

(7) A hollow or indentation in a surface (in substances like glass or when referring to surfaces (paint, varnish etc), treated usually as an imperfection).

(8) In physiology, natural hollow or depression in the body, organ, structure or part; fossa (used most often of the small of the back).

(9) In medicine, a small, indented scar, as one of at the site of a former pustule after smallpox, chicken pox or similar diseases; a pockmark.

(10) In music, a section of the marching band containing mallet percussion instruments and other large percussion instruments too large to march, such as the tam tam; the area on the sidelines where these instruments are placed.

(11) In botany, any of various small areas in a plant cell wall that remain un-thickened when the rest of the cell becomes lignified (used especially of the vascular tissue).

(12) In archaeology, a hole or trench in the ground, excavated according to grid coordinates, so that the provenance of any feature observed and any specimen or artifact revealed may be established by precise measurement.

(13) An enclosure, usually below the level of the spectators, as for staging fights between dogs, cocks, or, formerly, bears (as cockpit later extended to aircraft, cars, boats etc).

(14) In physical markets (such as a commodity exchange), a part of the floor of the exchange where trading is conducted (known in some places as “as open outcry pits” because transactions were done by traders shouting offers & acceptances at each other).

(15) In architecture, all that part of the main floor of a theater behind the musicians (in UK use also the main floor of a theater behind the stalls); sometimes used as “orchestra pit” (the area that is occupied by the orchestra in a theatre, located in front of the stage)

(16) In a hoist-way, a space below the level of the lowest floor served.

(17) In motorsport, an area at the side of a track, for servicing and refueling the cars (the use later adopted by cycle racing).

(18) In ten-pin bowling, the sunken area of a bowling alley behind the pins, for the placement or recovery of pins that have been knocked down.

(19) In track athletics,  the area forward of the takeoff point in a jumping event, as the broad jump or pole vault, that is filled with sawdust or soft earth to lessen the force of the jumper's landing.

(20) In casinos, the area or room containing gambling tables.

(21) In aviation, the part of the aircraft (usually the bottom of the fuselage) given over to freight; a luggage hold.

(22) In American football, the center of the line.

(23) In hospital slang, the emergency department.

(24) Literally, the bottom part (lowest point) of something; figuratively an undesirable location (especially if dirty, dangerous etc).

(25) In military slang, a bed (some evidence also of civilian (presumably ex-military) use).

(26) In nuclear physics, the core of an implosion nuclear weapon, consisting of the fissile material and any neutron reflector or tamper bonded to it.

(27) To mark or indent with pits or depressions.

(28) In medicine, to scar with pockmarks.

(29) In physiology (of body tissue) temporarily to retain a mark of pressure, as by a finger, instrument, etc.

(30) To place or bury something in a pit, as for storage.

(31) To set in opposition or combat, as one against another (usually in the forms “pit against” or “pitted against”).

(32) In motorsport, to exit from the track, entering the pits, to permit the pit-crew to effect a pit-stop.

(33) To remove the stone of a fruit (cherry, peach, or plum), sometimes with the use of a pitter (if something done vocationally, by a pitter, usually with the use of a pitter).

Pre 900: From the Middle English noun pit, pittle, pite, pute, put & putte, from the Old English pytt (natural or man-made depression in the ground, water hole, well; grave (the Kentish variation was “pet”), from the Proto-West Germanic puti, from the Proto-Germanic putt- (pool, puddle) which was the source also of the Old Frisian pet, the Old Saxon putti, the Old Norse pyttr, the Middle Dutch putte, the Dutch put, the Old High German pfuzza and the German Pfütze (pool, puddle), an early borrowing from Latin puteus (pit, trench, shaft) (etymologists noting the phonetic difficulties which exist also in the speculated relationship between puteus and the primitive Indo-European root pau- (to cut, strike, stamp).  Because the short u makes it unlikely puteus was from paviō (to strike), it might instead be linked to putāre (to prune) but the distance between the meanings makes etymologists just as sceptical and some suggest puteus may be a loanword though the spelling might be mysterious.  The use in the context of stone fruit was an Americanism dating from 1841, from the Dutch pet (kernel, seed, marrow), from the Middle Dutch pitte & pit (kernel, core (and cognate with pith)), from the Proto-Germanic pittan (the dialectal German Pfitze (pimple) was an oblique of the Proto-Germanic piþō), from the Proto-Germanic pithan- (source of pith).  Like the use in other contexts, each instance of the verb was derivative of the noun.  Pit is a noun & verb, pitter is a noun and pitted & pitting are verbs; the noun plural is pits.

Ford GT40 pit-stop, Sebring 12 Hours, International Championship for Makes, Sebring, March 1966.

The meaning “abode of evil spirits, hell” dates from the late twelfth century, one of the many means in the medieval world of referring to hell.  The meaning “very small depression or dent in the surface of an object” was in use by the early 1400s, the anatomical sense of “natural depression or hollow in some part of the body” from more than a century earlier.  The “pit of the stomach” was in the literature by the 1650s and it was so-called from the slight depression there between the ribs; the earlier terms used by doctors were the late fourteenth century breast-pit and heart-pit from circa 1300.  The meaning “part of a theater on the floor of the house, lower than the stage” was known by the 1640s while in market trading, the sense of “that part of the floor of an exchange where business is carried on” was first documented in 1903 as a coining in US English.

One of the high-water marks of the analog era: cockpit of the Anglo-French Concorde.

The phrase money-pit in the sense of “an edifice or project requiring constant outlay of cash with little to show for it” is quite modern, dating only from 1986 and assumed derived from the popular movie of the same name of the same name released that year (though it’s not impossible it had earlier been in regional use).  The prior use had been in the 1930s when it was used of the shaft on Oak Island, Nova Scotia which legend suggested would lead one to treasure buried by Captain Kidd or some other pirate.  Popular Mechanics magazine in September noted wryly the term might better refer to the millions spent trying to get the treasure out than the hoard of gold itself and in 2022, entrepreneurial engineer Elon Musk (b 1971) produced a variation, describing the factories in Europe building the electric Tesla cars as “money furnaces”.  The ash-pit (repository for ashes, especially the lower part of a furnace) dates from 1797 and it replaced the earlier (1640s) ash-hole, reflecting the implications of industrialization as forges and furnaces grew larger.  The venomous snake the pit-viper was so-named in 1872 because of the characteristic depression between the eyes and nose.  In commercial forestry, the pit-saw was first described in the 1670s, referring to a large saw operated by two men, one (the pit-sawyer) standing in the pit below the log being sawed, the other (the top-sawyer) standing atop.  Pitman was one of a wealth of vocationally-derived surnames which began to appear late in the twelfth century and it referred to one who dwelled literally “in or by a pit or hollow”, the use to describe someone who “works in a pit or mine” not documented until 1761.  Pitman shorthand, a popular form of hand-written transcription of spoken-word text which could later be read by a typist (often the “shorthand-taker) came into use in the 1860s, having been devised by English teacher & publisher (and devoted vegetarian) Sir Isaac Pitman (1813-1897) in 1837.  The phrase “flea-pit” dates from the 1920s and was used of cinemas, an allusion to the seats being infested with fleas or other bugs.

A Lindsay Lohan pit-stop from the blooper tape, Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005).

The noun armpit was a mid-fourteenth century description of the “hollow place under the shoulder” and it ran in parallel with the earlier arm-hole although the latter use faded as it came to be used of clothing and as an anatomical descriptor it was obsolete by the mid seventeenth century.  There was also the early fifteenth century asselle, from the Old French asselle, from the Latin axilla but armpit prevailed.  The colloquial phrase “armpit of the nation” was used as a term of derision for any place thought ugly and disgusting and it’s not clear when it emerged but it was well-documented from the early 1960s.  The general term “the pits” was a variation and from late in the twentieth century applied to anything or anyone thought the worse possible of their type (ie based on something hairy, smelly and ugly).  Infamously, it was used by the US tennis player John McEnroe (b 1959) who at Wimbledon in 1981 called an umpire “the pits of the world” during one of their discussions.  The noun pitter (curved instrument for removing stones from cherries and other fruit” appeared in 1868 when pitters were made available as a commercial product (doubtlessly they had for centuries been improvised or adapted from other utensils) and where they were used vocationally, the user was also called a pitter, the same linguistic process which produced the dual use of shucker in the oyster business (the termed adopted also by others).  Pit-a-pat & pitter-pat, being imitative, are wholly unrelated and date from the 1520s, the noun emerging in 1580.

Boeing 787 Dreamliner cockpit.

The original cockpits were first described in the 1580s and were a “pit or enclosed space for fighting cocks”, the use soon extended to any space in which animals were set to fight to the death, the audience betting on the outcome.  From this came the verb use “to pit against” which meant “to put or set in or into a pit” and this soon extended to boxing; by the eighteenth century in figurative use it was used on any conflict, argument or rivalry.  The general verb use (make pits in; form a small pit or hollow) had been in used (as pit, pitted & pitting) by the late fifteenth century.  The dog breed pit-bull dates from 1922 and was short for pit-bull terrier (first registered in 1912), a type noted for its aggression a fighting abilities.  Cockpit was used of ships early in the eighteenth century of midshipmen's compartment below decks and in some cases was later applied also to the enclosed cabins located towards the centre of the deck began to replace the steerage systems at the stern (later universally known as the “bridge”.  It was picked up for the pilot’s compartment in aircraft in 1914 and (by extension) was used in racing cars in the 1930s.  The word cesspit was created in the 1860s because advances in plumbing meant something was needed to distinguish more modern systems handling sewerage from the earlier cesspool, in use since the 1670s.  The mid fourteenth century pitfall (concealed hole into which a person or animal may fall unawares) was a description of a physical danger which came into figurative in the early 1600s to refer to “any hidden danger or concealed source of disaster.  In mining, a pitfall could also be literally a collapse of the internal structure of a mineshaft, sometime because of the catastrophic failure of pit-props (the timbers which provided the structural integrity of a shaft).  Sometimes a mile or more deep, pitfalls frequently were fatal and the death-toll among miners was high, the phrase “pit-hell” often heard.

The original pits at the Indianapolis Speedway, 1913. 

It was difficult and expensive (and often impossible) to lift heavy machinery to allow mechanics to work on engines or other components so, where possible, it was better to construct a pit underneath from which people could work.  The concept was well documented in workshops by 1839 and the term was by 1912 picked up in motorsport to describe the “area at the side of a track where cars are serviced and repaired” and the early pits were often holes in the ground with waist-high surrounds in which the crew could stand.  They were used also to store spare tyres, parts lubricants etc.  As the sport boomed, the pits quickly became fully enclosed service areas and even garages, built along pit-lane.  When a driver brought his car into the pits (located on the stretch of track called pit-straight), they were said to be pitting to be worked on by the pit crew who might during the pit-stop make repairs, re-fuel or change tyres, either in front of or behind the pit-wall.  Pit crew became a popular term beyond the tracks, used of airline baggage handlers, sea-port staff etc.  In motorsport, a pit-babe is an attractive young lady who is in the pit area for some reason, not necessarily directly related to the competition.

The pit-babes: coming or going, they always look good. 

Plague

Plague (pronounced pleyg)

(1) An infectious, epidemic disease caused by a bacterium, Yersinia pestis (trans transmitted to man by the bite of the rat flea (Xenopsylla cheopis)) characterized by fever, chills, and prostration.

(2) In casual use, any epidemic disease that causes high mortality; pestilence.

(3) Any widespread affliction, calamity, or evil, especially one regarded as divine retribution.

(4) Any cause of trouble, annoyance, or vexation; torment; to pester.

(5) As in “… a plague upon…”, to curse another, wishing any evil upon them.  The variation “a plague upon both your houses” suggests an unwillingness to take sides, an implication one thinks both parties are in the wrong. 

1350-1400: From the Middle English plage, a borrowing from the Old French plage, from the Latin plāga (blow, wound, (and pestilence in Late Latin), from plangō or plangere (to strike), the ultimate root being the Ancient Greek plēgē (a stroke).  It was cognate with the Middle Dutch plāghe (from the Dutch plaag) & plāghen (from the Dutch plagen), the Middle Low German plāge, the Middle High German plāge & pflāge (from the German plage) & plāgen (from the German plagen), the Swedish plåga, the French plaie and the Occitan plaga.  Plague exists as verb and noun, plaguer being the other noun, plaguing & plagued the verbs.  Other derived forms exist but are rarely seen except in historic or technical writing: plagioclase, plagioclimax, plagiohedral, plagiotropic and plagiotropism, plaguesome & plaguy.  For the actual disease there’s no actual synonym but many words tend to be used interchangeably in any context: invasion, scourge, contagion, pandemic, epidemic, curse, infection, outbreak, influenza, infestation, blight, calamity, pest, cancer, bedevil, afflict, beleaguer, bother, haunt, torment.

The famous phrase "A plague of both your houses" is from William Shakespeare's  (1564–1616) Romeo and Juliet (1597) .  When Mercutio says a "plague o' both your houses", he is damning both the Montagues and Capulets, asking fate to visit upon the families some awful fate because he blames both for his imminent death.  In modern use, it's used to suggest an unwillingness to take sides, the implication being one thinks both parties are in the wrong:

Mercutio. Help me into some house, Benvolio,

Or I shall faint. A plague o' both your houses!

They have made worms' meat of me: I have it,

And soundly too: your houses!

Romeo and Juliet, Act III, Scene 1

Plagues and the Plague

Masked-up: Lindsay Lohan avoiding plague.

Plague is an infectious disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis and exists in three strains: Bubonic plague, Septicemic plague & Pneumonic plague, the former two usually contracted by the handling of an infected animal or the bite of a flea, the last by contact between people via infectious droplets in the air.  Typically, several hundred cases are reported annually, mostly in India, the Congo, Madagascar & Peru and cases have been reported in the US but historically, outbreaks were large-scale events lasting months or years, the best known of which include the fourteenth century Black Death, estimated to have killed some fifty-million and the Great Plague of London which, in 1665-1666, caused the death of one in five of the city's population.  COVID-19 was thus a plague but not the plague.  A common noun, plague is written with an initial capital only at the beginning of a sentence, or (as in the Great Plague of London) when it has become a thing.  Notable epidemics have included:

The Black Death (1346-1353)

Death Toll: 75 – 200 million; Cause: Bubonic Plague

The Plague ravaged Europe, Africa, and Asia, with a death toll of 75-200 million, killing up to half the population of some European countries.  Thought to have originated in Asia, Plague was most likely spread by fleas living on the rats of merchant ships and in some countries, populations didn’t recover until the nineteenth century.  Now unknown in most parts of the world, outbreaks still happen in various places.

Plague of Justianian (541-542)

Death Toll: 25 million; Cause: Bubonic Plague

Thought to have killed perhaps half the population of Europe, the Plague of Justinian afflicted the Byzantine Empire and Mediterranean port cities.  The first verified and well-documented incident of the Bubonic Plague, it reduced the population of the Eastern Mediterranean by a quarter and devastated Constantinople, where, at the height of the pandemic, 5,000 a day were dying.

Antonine Plague (165 AD)

Death Toll: 5 million; Cause: Unknown

Also known as the Plague of Galen, the Antonine Plague affected Asia Minor (the modern Republic of Türkiye), Egypt, Greece, and Italy and is thought to have been either Smallpox or Measles, though the true cause is unknown. The disease was brought to Rome by soldiers returning from Mesopotamia.  The pandemic significantly weakened the Roman army.

London and the plagues of Plague

A London Bill of Mortality, 1665.

During the sixteenth & seventeenth centuries when "bubonic plague was abroad", the authorities compiled "Bills of Mortality" listing the causes of death recorded that week.  It's now believed the statistics are not wholly reliable (Plague numbers, like the global toll from Covid-19, believed greatly to have been understated) but the startling ratio of deaths attributed to Plague compared with other causes is indicative of the deadly nature of the epidemic.  In one week 3880 residents of London were reported as having succumbed to Plague, dwarfing the number recorded as dying by other causes including Old Age (54), Consumption (Tuberculous) (174), Small Pox (10), Fright (1), Grief (1), Spotted Fever and the Purples (190), Griping in the Guts (74), Lethargy (1), Rifing of the Lights (19) and Wind (1).  Like the Covid-19 statistics, there was likely some overlap in the numbers but the disparity remains striking.

After the Black Death, London's major plague epidemics occurred in 1563, 1593, 1625 and 1665 and although the last is best-known (associated as it was with the Great Fire of 1666), it's believed it was during the 1563 event the city suffered the greatest proportional mortality with between a quarter and a third of the populating dying; losses have been estimated to be as high as 18,000 and in some weeks the toll exceeded 1000.  From there, the disease spread around the nation the following year, the fleas which were the primary vector of transmission having hibernated through what was a comparatively mild winter.  Echoing the political and military effects of epidemics noted since Antiquity, it was at this time England was compelled to give up their last French possession, Le Havre, which was being held as a hostage for Calais.  Plague broke out in the occupying garrison and few troops escaped infection so the town had to be surrendered.

There were small, manageable outbreaks in 1603 & 1610-1611 but the epidemic of 1625 was severe and associated with a notable internal migration as those with the means to leave London did not, the reduction in the number of magistrates & doctors noted as inducing the predicable social consequences although as time passed, it was clear the disease was becoming less virulent and the mortality rate had fallen, something now attributed at least partially to the so-called "harvesting effect".  After 1666, the Plague didn't vanish and there were periodic outbreaks but the lessons had been well-learned and the efficiency of communications and the still embryonic public-health infrastructure operated well, even if little progress had been made in actual medical techniques.  The Hull (an East Yorkshire port city) Plague of 1699 was contained with little spread and when an outbreak of fever was reported in Marseilles in 1720, stricter quarantine measures  were imposed in English ports which successfully prevented any great spread.  Throughout the eighteenth & nineteenth centuries (as late as 1896-1897) there were occasional isolated cases and small outbreaks of plague in various parts of England but none ever remotely approached the scale of the 1665-1666 epidemic.

Werner Herzog's Nosferatu (1979) 

Werner Herzog's (b 1942) 1979 remake of Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's (1888–1931) masterpiece of Weimar expressionism (Nosferatu (1922)) takes place mostly in a small German city afflicted suddenly by Plague, Herzog rendering something chilling and darkly austere, despite the stylistic flourishes.  The 1979 film delivered the definitive screen Dracula and was a piece to enjoy when living in the social isolation of the Covid era.

Scene from Werner Herzog's Nosferatu (1979)

Contagious & Infectious

Contagious (pronounced kuhn-tey-juhs)

(1) Capable of being transmitted by bodily contact with an infected person or object.

(2) Carrying or spreading a contagious disease; bearing contagion, as a person or animal with an infectious disease that is contagious.

(3) Tending to spread from person to person.

1350–1400: From the Middle English, from the Old French contagieus (which endures in Modern French as contagieux), from the Late Latin contāgiōsus, the construct being contāgi(ō) (contagion) (a touching, contact," often in a bad sense, "a contact with something physically or morally unclean, contagion") + -ōsus (from the Old Latin -ōsos from -ōnt-to-s  from -o-wont-to-s, the last form being a combination of two primitive Indo-European suffixes (-went- & -wont- and -to-); the suffix -ōsus was added to a noun to form an adjective indicating an abundance of that noun, much as -εις (-eis) operated in Ancient Greek).  The Latin contingere (to touch) came from an assimilated form of com (with, together) + tangere (to touch) from the primitive Indo-European tag- (to touch, handle).  Originally a technical word purely used in medicine, the figurative sense in which it could be applied to anything apt to spread from one to another (rumors etc) dates from the 1650s.  Contagious is an adjective, contagion, contagionist, contagionism, contagiousness & contagosity are nouns and contagiously is an adverb; the most common noun plural is contagions.

Infectious (pronounced in-fek-shuhs)

(1) Communicable by infection, as from one person to another or from one part of the body to another.

(2) Causing or communicating infection (of a disease) caused by pathogenic microorganism or agent, such as bacteria, viruses, or protozoa.

(3) Tending to spread from one to another.

(4) In international law, capable of contaminating with illegality; exposing to seizure or forfeiture.

(5) Diseased (wholly obsolete).

1535–1545: A compound from Middle English, the construct being infect From Middle French infect, from Latin infectivus & infectus (from the Proto-Italic enfaktos (the construct being in- (not) + factus perfect passive participle of faciō (do, make)), perfect passive participle of inficere & inficiō (dye, taint) + -ious (an alternative spelling of -ous, from the Middle English -ous, borrowed from the Old French -ous and -eux, from the Latin -ōsus (full, full of) and a doublet of -ose in unstressed position; the suffix was used to form adjectives from nouns, to denote possession or presence of a quality in any degree, commonly in abundance).  The sense of "catching diseases, having the quality of spreading from person to person, communicable by infection" dates from the 1540s which by the early seventeenth century had spread to emotions, actions et al; earlier in the same sense were infectious, common by the late fifteenth century and infective from a hundred-odd years earlier.  The most novel adaptation of the word was the sense of "captivating", noted first in the 1650s.  Disinfectant (agent used for destroying the germs of infectious diseases) dates from 1837 from the French désinfectant (1816), noun use of present participle of désinfecter, or else from the adjective in English (by 1827) in the sense of "serving to disinfect".  Infectious is an adjective, infection, infectionist, infectionism, infector & infectiousness are nouns and infectiously is an adverb; the most common noun plural is infections.  

Sort of interchangeable

Increasing the risk of contagion: Lindsay Lohan sneezing.

Except for specialists such as virologists or epidemiologists, contagious and infectious can probably be used interchangeably although, when used in the figurative sense, many style guides suggest contagious should be used if referring to something undesirable whereas infectious should be preferred if speaking of the pleasantly irresistible quality of something.  There’s no etymological basis for this; it’s just a convention of use.  Something contagious is a thing which can be transmitted from one living being to another through direct or indirect contact.  Although infectious is also used to describe the process, it has a slightly different meaning in that it refers to diseases caused by infectious agents (such as or SARS-CoV-2 which causes COVID-19) not normally present in the body.  While the notion of contagiousness dates at least from Antiquity, the idea of infectious diseases is more modern, arising only after the publication of the germ theory of disease, not proposed until the late nineteenth century.  Contagious and infectious are also used to refer to people who have communicable diseases at a stage at which transmission to others is likely.

Reducing the risk of contagion: Lindsay Lohan in facemask (although the twin one-way, non-return valves of these masks limit their effectiveness in reducing the risk of infecting others).

For those in the relevant professions however, the difference between the two is significant.  “Infectious” is a description a disease-causing agent’s (typically a virus, bacterium or parasite) ability to enter, survive, and multiply in a host organism; by definition any infectious disease is caused by the presence and activity of such agents.  The best-known infectious diseases include the various strains of influenza (commonly clipped to “the flu”), tuberculosis (TB), malaria, hepatitis, AIDS (HIV the agent) and of course COVID-19 (Sars-COV-2 the agent).  “Contagious” refers to the ability of a disease to spread from one host (such as a bacterium, human or other animal) to another through a variety of vectors including (1) direct contact (shaking hands, kissing, sexual contact (these sometimes sequential)), (2) indirect contact (such as touching a door knob contaminated with the infectious agent using one’s hand which then introduces the agent to the system via the eyes, nose or mouth), (3) airborne transmission (usually by breathing in droplets when an infected person in close vicinity coughs or sneezes) or (4) through a third party (such as animal scratch or bite).

A contagious disease is a sub-set of infectious diseases which can (some more easily than others) be transmitted from one host to another.  Examples of contagious diseases include measles, chickenpox (and other –pox types), COVID-19 and most commonly, the endemic common cold.  While all contagious diseases are infectious, not all infectious diseases are necessarily contagious; tetanus is an infectious disease caused by the bacterium Clostridium tetani, but it is not contagious from host to host.