encephalitisn.
/ɛnˌsɛfəˈlʌɪtᵻs/, /ɛnˌkɛfəˈlʌɪtᵻs/, /ɛŋˌkɛfəˈlʌɪtᵻs/, /ˌɛnsɛfəˈlʌɪtᵻs/, /ˌɛnkɛfəˈlʌɪtᵻs/, /ˌɛŋkɛfəˈlʌɪtᵻs/, U.S. /ᵻnˌsɛfəˈlaɪdəs/, /ɛnˌsɛfəˈlaɪdəs/ Medicine.
Inflammation of the brain, often also involving the meninges and usually resulting from infection, esp. by viruses; an instance or type of this. Frequently with distinguishing word.Encephalitis causes alteration of the level of consciousness and disturbances of cognition, behaviour, and speech, often with epileptic seizures and other signs of localized brain dysfunction.eastern equine, Japanese, Murray Valley encephalitis, etc.: see the first element.
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the world > health and disease > ill health > a disease > disorders of internal organs > disorders of nervous system > [noun] > disorders of brain > inflammation of brain > encephalitis
encephalitis1798
polioencephalitis1885
polioencephalopathy1949
1798 C. G. Ontijd Treat. Mortal Dis. 223 I have changed the indeterminate and vague appellations of phrenitis and paraphrenitis, for those of encephalitis and diaphragmatitis.
1822 London Med. Repository 17 424 Dr. Omodei considered the encephalitis which occurred during the course of the fever to result frequently from a rheumatismal affection.
1855 P. H. Bird tr. E. Bouchut Pract. Treat. Dis. Children iii. 217 It must be here observed that encephalitis and tubercles of the brain, in the acute state, are usually allied with meningitis; their symptoms are mingled with those of this latter disease.
1880 Med. Temp. Jrnl. July 185 One was complicated with encephalitis.
1932 Public Health Rep. (U.S. Public Health Service) 47 1556 The concept of a single causative agent for these various encephalitides is an attractive one.
1985 R. Keiper Assateague Ponies xii. 84 They suffer from diseases like equine infectious anemia and equine encephalitis.
1991 Sports Illustr. 24 June 80/1 In July 1989 I had tickbite fever and encephalitis.
2011 Vanity Fair Jan. 62/2 They were given a variety of new drugs to treat everything from high blood pressure to chronic focal encephalitis, a brain inflammation that causes epileptic seizures and other neurological problems.
Compounds
encephalitis lethargica n. [ < scientific Latin encephalitis lethargica (C. von Economo 1917, in Wiener klin. Wochenschrift 30 581) < encephalitis + post-classical Latin lethargica , feminine singular of lethargicus adjective (see lethargic adj.)] a distinctive form of encephalitis which occurred in epidemic proportions between 1917 and the 1930s (and rarely thereafter), with variable symptoms often including somnolence and weakness or paralysis of eye muscles, and frequently followed by the development of parkinsonism; also called sleeping sickness and sleepy sickness.
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1918 Lancet 6 July 11/2 An epidemic of cases apparently in every way analogous to those under consideration occurred in the beginning of 1917 in Vienna, and a painstaking description of them will be found in the papers of Economo... He coined the name encephalitis lethargica for the condition, being duly impressed, as we in England have been, by the prominence of lethargy in the clinical picture.
1938 Times 31 Oct. 9/4 There has been a decline in the incidence of encephalitis lethargica (‘sleepy sickness’) and scarlet fever.
1973 O. Sacks Awakenings 9 Encephalitis lethargica—as von Economo was to name it—was a Hydra with a thousand heads.
2004 New Yorker 23 Aug. 65/3 All of these patients..were survivors of the great pandemic of encephalitis lethargica that swept the world from 1917 to 1928.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, December 2012; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1798