What Did the Doc Say? Quiz | Miscellaneous Health

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. With which troublesome illness, associated with the tropics, was the word "ague" once commonly associated?

Answer: Malaria

"Ague" was a word that once meant fever in general, or malarial fever in particular. The symptoms of malaria include both shivering and chills, vomiting and headaches. If this cannot be controlled, it can progress to seizures, or a coma, and even death. This illness is caused by a bite from a disease carrying female mosquito.

2. Defined as the inability to produce sound, which condition was once called "aphonia"?

Answer: Laryngitis

Laryngitis is caused by an interference in in the laryngeal nerve that controls the throat muscles. The word "aphonia" is defined as having no sound, so, put simply, the condition of laryngitis means that someone has lost his or her voice, hopefully temporarily. This can be caused by injury, illness, or even, in some cases, fear.

3. For what purpose was an antaphrodisiac once used?

Answer: To suppress sexual desire

Known by the medical profession for some time, but first recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1865, an antaphrodisiac was used to suppress sexual desire or yearnings. Today this pharmaceutical is known as an anaphrodesiac. It's hard to imagine clients battering down the doors to demand such a drug - unless there was a reduction sale on Viagra at the next counter.

4. For which unlikely medical purpose was antimonial wine once used?

Answer: To make people vomit

The use of this term dates right back to the beginning of the 1600s in the medical profession. Antimonial wine was an emetic made from strong wine, water and antimony potassium tartrate. It was used for the purpose of making people vomit. Quite likely a few large swigs of undiluted strongly fortified wine would have the same effect.

5. Known right back in the days of Ancient Greece, aphtha described which, not even remotely birdlike, affliction in infants?

Answer: Thrush

Known today as candidiasis, or more commonly as thrush, aphtha was a word the great Hippocrates himself used to describe white furry patches or small ulcers in the mouths of small infants, usually those less than one month old. Though used by those practising medicine for very many centuries, the word itself didn't make its way into medical dictionaries until 1851.

6. Bronze John was a term once used to describe which recurring tropical illness that can cause discoloration of the skin?

Answer: Yellow fever

Yellow fellow is usually a short term illness, but has the ability to keep recurring in some people. Its symptoms include high temperature, vomiting, pain in the muscles, particularly those of the back, and blinding headaches. Unfortunately, and although this illness is relatively brief, it does return to some fifteen per cent of its sufferers. If this is the case, pain begins in the muscles of the stomach, and, because of the onset of liver damage, the skin of some patients begins to turn an unpleasant shade of yellow.

This illness is believed to have originated in Africa.

7. Although cachexy is a condition that can affect anyone with an illness, it is far more likely to be found in third world countries. What is it?

Answer: Malnutrition

Cachexy, which we now know as malnutrition, is a condition that brings symptoms of tiredness, weakness, loss of muscle tone, eventual loss of appetite altogether, and alarming loss of weight. Although this overall branching term can be applied to people with any illness at all - such as cancer, failing heart, AIDS, Crohn's disease - you will also find people, and children in particular, suffering from cachexia/malnutrition in third world countries today.

8. What did you see when you observed someone with arcus senilis?

Answer: Opaque circles around corneas of the elderly

This is one ancient medical term still in use today. It describes pale or opaque rings around the corneas in eyes of the elderly, and is caused by an imbalance in lipid metabolism. Known of course as a condition since time began in the eyes of elderly people, this term wasn't properly named until the 1790 when it first began to appear in medical terminology.

9. Confinement was a term that once applied to which more positive and productive condition?

Answer: Childbirth

"Confinement" is an old-fashioned term applied to the final stages of a nine month journey - that of the actual process of giving birth. At one stage in history in more affluent countries, pregnancy and birth were natural processes that were almost treated as taboo topics by society, and a woman quite frequently retired from appearing in public when her pregnancy began to be obvious.

This was most particularly the case during the birth and for several weeks after, when a woman was described as being in confinement. Perhaps she was even doing hard labour?

10. Which sniffling, dripping condition was also called "coryza"?

Answer: The common cold

Coryza, also once known as rhinitis, is what we know today as the good old common cold. Its symptoms include sneezing, sniffling, snuffling, running nose, stuffy head, and generally feeling completely miserable until it begins to pass. Hopefully if you ever have coryza, you'll begin to feel better very soon.

Source: Author Creedy

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor rossian before going online.
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What Did the Doc Say? Trivia Quiz

This quiz deals with ten names no longer in use that were once given by the medical profession to various conditions. How many do you know?

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