A transmission electron microscopic image of an isolate from the first U.S. case of the ‘Covid-19’ coronavirus.
Photo: SCIENCE SOURCE
With the coronavirus epidemic sparking a global health scare, it can be hard to keep up with the terminological developments.
For the official name of the disease caused by the virus, the World Health Organization has settled on “Covid-19,” short for “coronavirus disease 2019.” While the outbreak is thought to have emerged from an animal and seafood market in Wuhan, China, health officials have avoided naming the disease after its place of origin. “Having a name matters to prevent the use of other names that can be inaccurate or stigmatizing,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters earlier this month—although that hasn’t stopped people from giving the disease names like “Wuhan flu” or even “Wuflu.”
As for the virus itself, the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses is now dubbing it “SARS-CoV-2” (for “severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2”). The journal Science reports that the WHO isn’t happy with that choice, with officials opting for “the virus responsible for Covid-19” or “the Covid-19 virus” instead.
Amid the shifts in nomenclature lies one unchangeable word, “virus,” which can elicit deep-seated anxieties all on its own.
The English word “virus” is based on a Latin word for “poisonous secretion,” and early on it often kept to its original meaning of “venom,” either the literal or figurative kind. The Oxford English Dictionary records a polemical pamphlet from 1599 titled “Master Broughton’s Letters,” in which the author plays with the word’s similarity to another Latinism, vires, meaning “powers”: “You have spent all the vires and power you have for the defence of a vain paradox, and spit out all the virus and poison you could conceive.”
“ ‘Virus’ was used in medieval times for the discharge from an ulcer or wound. ”
In the world of medicine, “virus” was first used in medieval times for the discharge from an ulcer or wound, eventually shifting to substances within the body that cause infectious diseases. It could also refer to an infectious substance used for vaccination, as when Edward Jenner published his discovery in 1799 that “cow-pox virus” could be used as a vaccine against smallpox.
As biological science advanced, “virus” took on a more specific meaning for tiny infectious agents, smaller than bacteria, that replicate in living cells. Early glimmers of viruses in the modern sense were discerned by the Dutch microbiologist Martinus Beijerinck, whose experiments with infected tobacco plants in 1898 led him to posit what he called a “contagium vivum fluidum” (a contagious living liquid) that could pass through filters designed to keep out bacteria. Beijerinck was wrong about the liquid nature of viruses, but he opened up the new field of virology. It took off especially in the 1930s, when electronic microscopes allowed scientists to see viruses for the first time.
“Virus” spread in new metaphorical directions later in the 20th century. David Gerrold’s 1972 science-fiction novel “When HARLIE Was One” imagined a computer “virus program” that replicated itself like biological viruses do, predicting a threat to computers that has become all too real.
The adjective “viral,” used in a more benign way, became popular in marketing circles in the late 1980s, when “viral marketing” was first used for word-of-mouth advertising. The rise of the internet meant that information about a product or a service could “go viral” when shared by customers.
All the while, scientists have struggled to keep pace with actual biological viruses, identifying and naming newly discovered ones. In 1968, an article in the journal Nature reported that virologists had recognized what they called “coronaviruses”—so named because the fringe around the virus, when viewed with an electron microscope, resembles the corona of the sun. As viruses continue to replicate, so does the language used to describe them.
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February 22, 2020 at 12:23AM
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‘Virus’: The Spread of a Latin Term for Poison - Wall Street Journal
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