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#115123 11/03/03 07:21 PM
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of troy Offline OP
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i am reading Richard Preston's The Demon in The Freezer --which is about smallpox-- and 2 words jumped out..
P.35
....a sweet, sickly, cloying odor drifted into the hallway.
It was not like anything the medical staff at the hospital had ever encountered before. It was not a smell of decay, for his skin was sealed. The pus within the skin was throwing off gases that defused out of his body. In those days, it was called the foetor of smallpox. Doctors today call it the odor of a cytokine storm.

p. 36
.... along with a stench coming through the skin, like something nasty inside a paper bag.(refering to the foetor)

--------------------------------------------------------
p. 36
In 1875, Dr. William Osler was the attending physician in the smallpox wards of the Montreal General Hospital. He called the agent that caused the sweet smell of smallpox a 'virus', which is latin for poison. In Osler's day, no one knew what a virus was, but Osler knew the smell of this one. When there were few or no pustules on the skin, he would sniff at the patients's wrists and forehead, and he could smell the foetor of the virus and it helped him nail down a diagnosis.

------------

i am guessing that foeter is related to the word fell as in felon/fallen... but there are enough doctors here abouts--if any can information--it would be interesting.

but i suspect some are too, too young to know.. NYC as a major port of entry required smallpox vaccinations up until 1974--most places didn't require them much after 1970--unless traveling outside of the country.

i only remember the date, because my son born in 1973 was required to get one as part of his 'normal innoculations', (along with polio, DPT, etc) but my daughter didn't. i got my last one in 1970--i was traveling out of the country, and the he (the patient) in the first paragraph is about a case in europe in 1970...

i didn't know the origins of virus...and thought it interesting... (i do know that both some bactreria and virus's 'make you sick' by creating protiens that are toxic... some don't cause a lot of 'infection' (ie, pus) but do their damage as almost a side effect... (just as early plants excreted oxogen, (and changed the atmosphere in a way positive for us) but deadly to many organizism.)



#115124 11/04/03 12:51 AM
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background, not depth:

Foetor is the Latin spelling; it was plain old "fetor" in 1962 in NYC and it meant simply "a bad recognizable smell." It's more akin to "fetid" than to "fell," I suspect, though perhaps there is a common origin.

Specifically there was "fetor hepaticus," the characteristic smell of patients with liver failure, described as being like spoiled hay. Those patients often had high levels of ammonia (ordinarily detoxified by the liver, but not in these unfortunates) which may have been a, if not the, major contributor.

Diabetes out of control (keto-acidosis) also has a recognizable odor: fruity, sweet breath. I don't recall that it has its own name, though -- "fetor diabeticorum" or some such?

Bill? Doc?

P.S."Virus" is the root of "virulent". But just how do both of these relate to latin "vir" = "man" ?

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Dear wofahulicodoc: I don't remember the liver breath odor.But I had a patient with ozena, which was much worse, because in the late forties no treatment worked. The patient was limited to outdoor jobs. And at home the windows had to be kept open.

Ozena
A disease of the nose characterized by a wasting away of the bony ridges and mucous membranes inside the nose along with nasal crusting, discharge, and a very bad smell (often present in various forms of rhinitis). It may occur following prolonged nasal swelling.






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As far as I am aware, the ligature is used even today in Britain, so fœtor, encyclopædia and so on are not just Latin.


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wwh Offline
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Dear Shanks: I suspect that the effort required to produce ligatures on the computer will erode UK enthusiasm for them.

Fetor can have many sources: from Internet:
"I set out. Away from the lanterns my progress slowed. I stumbled half-blind in the shadows; I moved cautiously around the corners of temples, coming now upon a recumbent cow, now upon a column bathed in moonbeams. When, hoping to make better time, I stepped away from the river into the Old City, I was met by heat and a fetor of urine and jasmine petals and buffalo dung; the Old City was a maze of yard-wide alleys choked with surging throngs of animals and people. Stymied by the labyrinth, unable to breathe, with sweat drenching my shirt, I retraced my steps and resolved to keep to the bank until I could make a direct climb to my destination."

I remember being amused in biochem lecture by statement that Roman ladies used to drink small amounts of turpentine, because it gave the odor of violets to their urine. The lecturer was unable to tell me for whose benefit this was done. Risible to imagine escort sampling, and then making compliment on effectivness.


#115128 11/04/03 09:57 PM
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...ligature is used even today in Britain, so fœtor, encyclopædia and so on are not just Latin

I know, and you're right; it's just that I've always considered that phenomenon as the British retaining the Latin orthography, rather than it being a British spelling.



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Of course they weren't ligatures in Classical Latin, they were just separate letters.
When did they become ligatures? I would suspect it was in mediævel monk days when the OE and AE, originally pronounced oy and eye, respectively, had slid together in pronunciation and there were a bunch of other shortenings, letters left out, either represented by horizontal lines over words or just completely elided.


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I finished my (final) exams a week ago and hence no longer have any idea about anything medical. I don't remember there being a specific name for the fetor of keto-acidosis - we just called it ketone breath, which does sound somewhat like an schoolyard taunt at the school for the gifted. There is also a uraemic fetor associated with renal failure.


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wwh Offline
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"schoolyard taunt" Does this refer to Steven Spielberg's
expression of brotherly love in E.T.? I was not amused by it.



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