Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Psittacosis
/ˌsɪtəˈkoʊsɪs/noun
A bacterial infection caught from birds, causing fever and pneumonia in humans.
The Greek roots
ψιττακός
psittakós
parrot
-ωσις
-ōsis
diseased condition
Literally: “parrot condition”
The story of the word
Named in the 1890s after European outbreaks traced to crates of imported parrots. The winter of 1929 to 1930 produced an international scare, with newspapers running parrot fever headlines, import bans in several countries and a rushed hunt for the organism that infected several of the investigators. The culprit turned out to be Chlamydia psittaci, carried by pigeons and poultry as readily as by parrots, so the disease is also called ornithosis.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → medical coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1890s
Same family
psittacinetuberculosisthrombosis
In a sentence
Ask any patient with atypical pneumonia whether they keep birds, or you will miss the psittacosis.
The aviary was closed for a fortnight after two cases of psittacosis.