{"id":49493,"date":"2021-01-29T17:41:52","date_gmt":"2021-01-29T16:41:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/?p=49493"},"modified":"2021-02-05T17:41:03","modified_gmt":"2021-02-05T16:41:03","slug":"jeffrey-aronson-when-i-use-a-word-viruses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2021\/01\/29\/jeffrey-aronson-when-i-use-a-word-viruses\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Viruses"},"content":{"rendered":"

In reviewing words that have been first recorded in the 50 years since I qualified as a doctor, I have noticed how frequently names of viruses have appeared, rather like the way in which infections often feature in 2021\u2019s medical <\/span>anniversaries<\/span><\/a>. But infections have always been with us, so this is not perhaps surprising. No more than a handful of viruses have entered the <\/span>OED<\/span><\/i> each year, but there is at least one in most years. For example, 1981, which I have just reviewed (Table 1), features the Hantaan virus. The complete list for 1970\u20132020 is in Table 2.<\/span><\/p>\n

Table 1.<\/b> Biomedical words (n=31) in the <\/span>OED<\/span><\/i> for which the earliest citations are from 1981 (out of a total of 197); I have found two antedatings (1 and 20 years)<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

*Antedatings: ubiquitinated (<\/span>1980<\/span><\/a>); myelinogenic (<\/span>1961<\/span><\/a>)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2020The terms \u201cplastination\u201d and \u201cplastinated\u201d were invented by the German anatomist Gunther von Hagens (<\/span>US Patent 4,320,157<\/span><\/a>) to describe the method he used for preserving dissected tissues by embalming with formaldehyde, dehydration with acetone, and infusion of an epoxy resin; however, there is an instance of the word \u201cplastinated\u201d in a paper titled \u201cA contribution to the history of the fresh-water Copepoda.\u201d by FW Cragin, published in the <\/span>Transactions of the Annual Meetings of the Kansas Academy of Science <\/span><\/i>(1881-1882; 8: 66-81): \u201cThe mandible consists of one plastinated segment, and is similar to the mandible described under <\/span>C. Clausii<\/span><\/i>.\u201d I don\u2019t know what the word means in this context, assuming it is not a misprint for something different, and I have not found another instance of this anywhere else.<\/span><\/p>\n

Table 2.<\/b> The names of viruses that have appeared in the <\/span>OED<\/span><\/i> with initial citations in the last 50 years; I have found two minor antedatings (1 and 2 years)<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

*Antedatings: Lassa virus (<\/span>1969<\/span><\/a>); lentivirus (<\/span>1977<\/span><\/a>)<\/span><\/p>\n

The first virus to be so called, by the Dutch microbiologist and botanist Martinus Willem Beijerinck, was the tobacco mosaic virus. He described it in a monograph titled <\/span>Ueber ein Contagium vivum fluidum als Ursache der Fleckenkrankheit der Tabaksbl\u00e4tter<\/span><\/i> (Amsterdam: Johannes M\u00fcller, 1898; Figure 1). He used the Latin term \u201cContagium vivum fluidum\u201d since he recognized the infective property of the virus but thought that it was some sort of fluid. However, in the German text he used the word virus to describe the organism.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

How is it then that we can find a range of earlier uses of the word \u201cvirus\u201d apparently referring to other organisms? Here, for example, is an extract from a paper in the <\/span>Philadelphia Journal of Homoeopathy<\/span><\/i> in 1954: \u201cThe idea had been entertained by some \u2026 that variola virus, transferred from human to kine, if it would not become the genuine cow-pox, would, nevertheless, become so modified as to answer all the purposes of the genuine.\u201d And here is Edward Jenner, writing in 1799: \u201cMr. Henry Jenner [his nephew and assistant] inserted the vaccine virus into the arm of a child.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The reason is that before the word \u201cvirus\u201d was used to describe filterable infective particles, it had other meanings. The IndoEuropean root WEIS, one of several that meant to flow, was particularly applied to unpleasant oozes. This gave the Greek word \u1f30\u03cc\u03c2, venom, the poisonous secretion of a snake. In preclassical Greek the word began with a digamma, \u03dd\u03b9\u03cc\u03c2, a letter that was later lost in classical Greek, but persisted when it came into Latin, as in \u201cvirus\u201d. Virus meant venom, as in Greek, and therefore any poisonous substance. It could also mean any secretion, plant or animal, with medicinal or magical power, and hence semen. Indeed, the earliest meaning in English was just that, although the <\/span>OED<\/span><\/i> gives only a single instance, in a translation, by John Trevisa, of <\/span>De Proprietatibus Rerum <\/span><\/i>by<\/span> Bartholomaeus Anglicus<\/span> (c. 1398): \u201c<\/span>for it is a man his owne membre o\u00feer for virus come ou\u021dt \u00feerof.\u201d A little later it was first used to describe a discharge such as pus from an ulcer or wound, and later still any substance used for vaccination. Hence the examples cited above. From the late 16<\/span>th<\/span> century it was also used to mean snake venom. Other derivatives are shown in Figure 2.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In the <\/span>OED<\/span><\/i> the earliest use of the word \u201cvirus\u201d as a filterable infectious agent is from the <\/span>Journal of Comparative Pathology and Therapeutics<\/span><\/i> (1900) \u201cThe virus of foot-and-mouth disease passes through a Berkefeld filter when it is suspended in a watery liquid.\u201d This had been <\/span>reported<\/span><\/a> in the same journal in 1899 by Loeffler & Frosch, who described a filterable substance \u201csome corpuscular element\u201d that caused foot and mouth disease. They mentioned the word \u201cvirus\u201d several times, but using it in its earlier meaning, referring to \u201cthe virus found in the contents of vesicles\u201d, admitting that they could not culture an organism.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then a new meaning emerged: a self-replicating program or piece of code that can take over your computer or network, activated by the user. A worm is similar but activates itself. The earliest <\/span>OED<\/span><\/i> citation is to a sci-fi novel, <\/span>When HARLIE was One<\/span><\/i>, by David Gerrold (Jerrold David Friedman): \u201cYou know what a virus is, don’t you? The virus<\/span> program does the same thing.\u201d However, there is an earlier instance in a 1970 <\/span>short story<\/span><\/a>, \u201cThe Scarred Man\u201d, by Greg Benford: \u201cSoon enough I had devised a \u2018virus\u2019 that could be cured with a program called Vaccine.\u201d A proper computer virus was created by Fred Cohen in <\/span>1983<\/span><\/a>, after Rich Skrenta had produced a harmless rudimentary one in <\/span>1982<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

So when something spreads like wildfire through social media, it is said to have gone viral. If I tweet news of this column and everybody who reads the tweet retweets it, the news will go viral. Here\u2019s my tweet<\/a>. If you start the retweeting process and everyone else follows, we may beat the current <\/span>record<\/span><\/a> of 4.28 million retweets.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jeffrey Aronson<\/strong>\u00a0is a clinical pharmacologist, working in the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine in Oxford’s Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences. He is also president emeritus of the British Pharmacological Society.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Competing interests:<\/strong> None declared.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In reviewing words that have been first recorded in the 50 years since I qualified as a doctor, I have noticed how frequently names of viruses have appeared, rather like […]<\/p>\n

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