2008 ORIAS Summer Teachers Institute
Vocabulary for “Pestilence and Public Health in World History”
Jo Hays, Loyola University, Chicago

Antibiotic: A substance that destroys (or inhibits) bacteria. Most often, an antibiotic is derived from other organic substances, such as molds and fungi. The first antibiotic, penicillin, was extracted in 1928, produced in testable quantities in 1940, introduced in use against bacterial infections and diseases in World War II. Other antibiotics followed shortly thereafter.

Asymptomatic: Showing no symptoms. A person who is infected by a disease microorganism but who shows no symptoms is asymptomatic. The word is used to describe “healthy carriers,” among others.

Bacteria: Microorganisms, usually one-celled, many of them found in animals (including humans) and plants. Some bacteria are responsible for important infections and diseases. “Bacteria” is a plural word; its singular form is “bacterium.”

“Construction” of a disease: The way a particular society or individual interprets a disease.

Contagion: Disease passing from one person to another by direct contact.

Diagnosis: The process of identifying a disease in a particular case.

Divination: Consultation of signs (from the supernatural, for example) to forecast the outcome of a disease.

Endemic: Of a disease, found usually or habitually in an area or among a population. The common cold is “endemic.”

Enzootic: An endemic disease in an animal population.

Epidemic: Of a disease, resulting in levels of sickness and/or death higher than ordinarily expected; an excessively prevalent disease.

Epidemiology: The study of epidemics, which measures their incidence and distribution and tries to understand why they spread where and when they do.

Epizootic: An epidemic disease in an animal population.

Etiology: The study of the causes of a disease, or a statement of the causes of it.

Germ theory: The theory that diseases are produced by the actions of microorganisms. In some respects centuries old, the theory started to assume its modern shape in the 1870s.

Humoral theory: The belief that disease results from an imbalance of the essential “humors” of the body. Humors were most often associated with specific fluids: blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm. Disease was treated by restoring those humors to their proper balance.

Immunity:  Ability to resist a specific disease. May be inherited, acquired by a previous exposure to the disease, or gained by administration of inoculation or vaccination.

Inoculation: The deliberate introduction of a disease into the body with the goal of conferring later immunity to it.

Medicalization: The acceptance by a population or an individual of the authority of medical explanations and experts.

Miasma: A pollution of the atmosphere, held responsible for diseases.

Morbidity: The incidence of a disease in a particular time and place. A morbidity rate is the rate of incidence of a disease. Often expressed as a ratio: for example, 500 per 100,000 population, meaning that in a population of 100,000, 500 have the disease.

Mortality: The incidence of death in a particular time and place. A mortality rate of a disease is the incidence of death from it. Also often expressed a ratio: for example, a disease with a mortality rate of 100 per 100,000 per year is one in which 100 people per year die of the disease  in a population of 100,000.
 
Omens: Supernatural signs taken as evidence of a disease’s future course.

Pandemic: An epidemic on a very large geographical scale, involving several regions, continents, or the whole world.

Prognosis: The forecast or prediction of a disease’s likely outcome.

Quarantine: Isolation of a person (or persons, on a ship, for instance) to prevent the spread of disease (real or suspected) to others. Can also mean isolating products and goods. Originally literally meant a forty-day period of isolation (as in Italian, quaranta, forty.)

Sacrifices: Offerings to the gods, in the hope of pleasing them and thus averting their anger.

Spells: Words spoken to invoke magic or supernatural powers, perhaps in response to a disease.

Symptoms: The outward signs of a disease, perceived by the senses.

Therapy: Measures taken to alleviate or cure a disease.

Vaccination: Administration of an agent of a disease, or of a synthetically prepared substitute for it, to promote a body’s immunity to it. The word was originally used specifically for the process developed in 1798 to prevent smallpox. Because material from the animal disease cowpox was then used, the process was named from the Latin word vacca, cow. The word has since been extended to such preventive measures for any disease. “Vaccine” is the material used.

Vector:  An organism (most often an insect) that carries a parasite (for instance, a disease-causing microorganism) from one animal (or plant) to another; hence, a carrier of disease. Fleas are vectors for plague, lice for typhus, mosquitoes for yellow fever, and so on.

Virgin soil epidemic: An epidemic of a disease in a population that has not experienced the disease before, and so has no inherited or acquired immunity to it.

Virus: An extremely simple, submicroscopic organism. Some viruses are responsible for some important diseases, which are called viral diseases. Antibiotics have no effect on viruses.

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Vocabulary list adapted by J. N. Hays from his the "glossary" in:
J. N. Hays, Epidemics and Pandemics: Their Impacts on Human History (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 2005), pp. 481-484.