Humans are fascinated by gore and violence, but even more so the mysterious and unsolved.

Interest in these disturbing and unpleasant subjects is called

Morbid Curiosity, and it has gripped millions of people throughout the ages. I am one of

those people. My name is Halley, and this is the Morbid Curiosity podcast.

Hello, patrons. This episode is going to be a bit more casual, as it's hard to talk about everything I want to talk about under the umbrella of this topic without just listing

things. So I'll give some historical context and then discuss some of the better known obsolete terms for disease,

some silly and some offensive, and then a list of just some fun terms that aren't used anymore.

If you like this type of episode, I have enough info to do a similar episode on obsolete medical theories.

There are some wild ones out there, so let me know

if you'd like to hear about those as well. I also apologize for anything I pronounce incorrectly.

I only speak English, and even my English isn't flawless. Some older medical terms and probably

some modern ones, too, reference stereotypes about groups of people.

I and the MCP do not endorse or support such terms or views. The goal of medicine is to heal,

but it's also caused harm throughout history. As this podcast is very much about acknowledging

that harm, I hope to reveal and acknowledge it for some of these

medical terms and spark conversation in hopes of a more inclusive future. Medical terminology has a deep

history in Latin and Greek languages, as some of the most prolific medical writers, such as Hippocrates

and Galen, wrote in these languages.

Numerous other languages, including Arabic, Chinese, and Spanish have also contributed to medical

terminology. Around the time that the Romans conquered Greece, which was about 150 BCE, medical records

were chronicled by hand to create medical books. Most of the terms

for symptoms and conditions were in Greek or Latin, and described the physicality of the condition.

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