It’s the Pitts: Cooties and Creeps

by Dick Perue

In the last 100 years, we have eliminated such diseases as the slobbers, palsy, quincy, the crud and the croup, and we didn’t have to have a single telethon, marathon or beg for money on TV to do it. 

How easy we forget the pain and discomfort diseases such as puking fever, English sweating fever, the grip and the screws caused, and in all this time, I can’t ever remember getting a piece of junk mail giving me a nickel in hopes I’d contribute to a campaign to cure dropsy, breakbone fever, ague, carbuncles, boils or piles.

The names of diseases when I was a kid were much more descriptive than they are now.

Instead of non-descriptive names like COVID-19, which doesn’t give a clue as to what it is or does, back then we called them like we saw them with diseases like barrel fever, which was just what one would surmise – alcoholism. 

Ship fever and jail fever, now known as typhus, got their names from the terribly crowded and unsanitary conditions on ships and in jails. 

I think one can guess from their names what the following diseases dealt with – trench mouth, liver complaint, falling sickness, ear throb, creeping numbness, the horrors, chin cough and softening of the brain. 

Not to mention, the heebie jeebies, the creeps and the much-dreaded cooties every kid seemed to get in the third grade. Although, in all honesty, I don’t think anyone ever died from cooties or anyone has ever actually seen one. 

I can only remember a few maladies that gave no clue as to what part of the body they affected like puerperal fever, eel thing, dengue, anasarca, scrumpox and chalkstones, which we now know as arthritis.

Oops, upon further review, it seems for some reason diseases have evolved over time, and we didn’t actually eliminate them. We merely changed their names. 

For example, quincy is now tonsillitis, dropsy is fluid retention, screws is rheumatism, scrumpox is impetigo, chin cough is whooping cough, consumption is tuberculosis, softening of the brain is stroke, commotion is concussion, gathering is a collection of pus, corruption is infection, hectial complaint is fever, inanation is starvation, horrors is now called delerium tremens, the grip is influenza, ague is malaria and strangery is rupture – not to be confused with rapture. 

Also, worm fit is diarrhea, in which case the doctor’s only advice was, “Don’t sneeze.”

Some diseases have been merged and consolidated along the way. 

For some reason tuberculosis went by several names including consumption, phthisis and long sickness, etc. It was said all could be cured by sleeping on the ground. 

If a person had languor, black dog, melancholia, domestic malady or nervous affectations, they suffered from depression. 

Some of the worst sounding diseases from way back when were black vomit, mortification – gangrene – and puerperal exhaustion – death from childbirth.

We have eliminated a few diseases like grocer’s itch, which was caused by mites in the flour or sugar sold by a grocer, and other diseases were named after people like Parkinson’s disease, Bronze John, Hansen’s disease – leprosy – and Pott’s disease, not to be confused with Pitts’ disease, which is caused by coming in contact with me.

Another much-dreaded disease that went by several different names is syphilis which had been known as bad blood, great pox, French pox, King’s evil and Lues disease. I don’t know who Lue was, but how would you like your legacy to be that you had a venereal disease named after you? 

For some reason, my family – probably bad genes – has suffered from many of these old-time diseases. 

My father had barrel fever – I’m still not sure if alcoholism is a disease – a great-grandfather had consumption, and when my great-grandmother went crazy, we simply said she “went off her rocker.” 

My mother once had lumbago – back pain – so bad we had to carry her downstairs to the stove to cook dinner, and I’ve been been inflicted with many of the old diseases. 

I’ve had softening of the brain or stroke, deplumation or baldness, decrepitude or old age, St. Vitus Dance or jerks, falling sickness or seizures, acute mania or craziness, Scrivener’s palsy or writer’s cramp and bowel complaints. 

I’m just glad to report, I’ve never had Lues disease or I’d have some explaining to do to my wife.