From 'arse-ropes' to 'flying venom', a history of how we have come to talk about viruses and medicine

  • Written by: The Conversation
From 'arse-ropes' to 'flying venom', a history of how we have come to talk about viruses and medicineWes Mountain/The Conversation, CC BY-ND

Symptom, virus, epidemic, quarantine.

We’ve become used to these terms in 2020. But the “COVID-19 vocabulary” might have been very different had it not been for a few twists and turns in English history.

If history had gone differently, for instance, we might visit the leech about flying venom...

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