A Montana farmer says his dad used to warn against catching the epizooty. In 1872, an epizootic respiratory disease among horses nearly brought the United States to a standstill. The word epizootic is modeled on the Greek word epidemic, from Greek...
The 2011 words of the year list wouldn’t be complete without occupy, as in the Occupy protests that sprang up in Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park and elsewhere. And Zuccotti lung? It’s an illness that made its rounds among the camped-out...
A Charlottesville, Virginia, caller says that when she was a child and recovering from an illness, her mother fed her a kind of milk toast she called graveyard stew. Is that strange name unique to her family? This is part of a complete episode.
overtraining syndrome n.— «Though it seems innocuous, overtraining isn’t just a matter of having overdone things in a workout or two. It is, instead, a recognized illness (known formally as “overtraining syndrome” by the growing cadre of...
head table n.— «A survey of the workers confirmed what the plant’s nurses had suspected: those who got sick were employed at or near the “head table,” where workers cut the meat off severed hog heads.» —“A Medical Mystery Unfolds in...
creeping crud n.— «The Republican state representative from Williamson County, interviewed at his Capitol office last week, for 10 days or so had been fighting what some people call the creeping crud, a debilitating mixture of cold, flu...
