Mental Floss

Quiz: Can You Match the Disease to Its Olde-Tyme Name?

Ailments have gone by various names over the centuries.

By mentalfloss .com

Fifteenth-century woodcut of a young woman who represents syphilis with the skeletons of dead lovers behind her bed.
Fifteenth-century woodcut of a young woman who represents syphilis with the skeletons of dead lovers behind her bed. / Fototeca Gilardi/Getty Images (syphilis), Vadim Almiev/Shutterstock (illustrated scrolls)
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There’s a reason they call it “practicing medicine.” Treating illness is an imperfect pursuit, with plenty of trial and error along the way. If you suffered from asthma in the 19th century, for example, you might be prescribed cigarettes. Hay fever? Try some cocaine. Drinking too much? Some ground bird beaks should help.

In addition to misguided treatments, medicine also had to evolve its vocabulary. Take a look at some common conditions and see if you can guess the original name.

Medicine hasn’t completely abandoned obscure terms for simple problems. Sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia is a fancy way of referring to an ice cream headache; sternutate is a sneeze; aphthous stomatitis is a canker sore. If you really want to test (or annoy) your physician, you can tell them you’ve been suffering from repeated bouts of synchronous diaphragmatic flutter and wait to see if they realize you’re talking about having the hiccups.

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