Defunct Diseases

Diseases are no less mortal than the people they afflict. So argues Dr. Bernard Straus of New York Medical College in the current Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine. As Straus points out, dozens of mankind's most awful afflictions have ceased to exist.

Many ailments have fallen victim to medical progress. Improved sanitary conditions have virtually eliminated typhoid fever; vaccines have made poliomyelitis a rarity. Antibiotics have all but routed mastoiditis, an inflammation of bone cells behind the inner ear and, along with vaccines, helped bring whooping cough and diphtheria under control. A number of other diseases have just disappeared. Tuberculous pneumonia, the "galloping consumption" that consumed many literary and operatic heroines, has all but galloped off the medical scene. The mysterious "sweating sickness" that swept through France as late as 1907, has apparently vanished.

Out of Style. Other diseases have failed to survive medical scrutiny. "Athlete's heart" was practically pronounced dead in 1927, to the relief of the anxieties of many a long-distance runner. Ptomaine, long blamed for food poisoning, has been exposed as a fraud; most of its symptoms are now attributed to bacterial or viral infections, while the rest are the result of chemical contamination.

Chlorosis, the virginal love sickness that produced a greenish pallor in young girls suffering the pangs of unrequited love, passed out of medical terminology when it was discovered to be nothing more than iron-deficiency anemia. Febricula, a "little fever" that lingered in some medical texts until 1947, was once thought to be caused by stale beer, foul odors and sewer gases. It has since been identified as a symptom of a variety of other--and more easily identified--viral infections of the respiratory tract.

A few diseases have merely failed to withstand the test of time. The "vapors," a vague complaint that affected women in the 18th century, survives only as a literary allusion. "Swooning," with which Victorian ladies reacted to emotional stress, has simply passed out of style.

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