"Communicable" disease - origin of word usage

Factual Questions
1

I’m listening to a recent This American Life episode (#736: The Herd), and early on, one of the interviewees mentions that the usage of the word “communicable” in relation to disease originated with the fact that the only way to know how a disease was spreading in the days before viruses and other infectious agents were able to be isolated (i.e., the 1918 flu pandemic) was for members of the public to “communicate” reports of their symptoms to the health authorities.

From the transcript:

Ira Glass

Howard says Dr. Starkloff had all kinds of messages, telling people to wash their hands, don’t cough on others. And because medicine was so primitive back then, they hadn’t actually isolated the flu virus. So they had no way to confirm if you had it. They couldn’t test you. So the only way they could keep track of the disease was that people who were sneezing and sick told authorities. So Starkloff would tell the public–

Howard Markel

These are the symptoms that you need to call us about. You need to communicate this to us. That’s where the word “communicable disease” comes from, by the way. Not so much that it’s infectious, even though it is, but that one source is communicating it to a higher source and to a public health department.

Ira Glass

Oh, wow.

Now, that sounds dubious to me. It seems like a neat folk etymology, but it’s probably the case that the more straightforward communicable → able to be transmitted → disease that is able to be transmitted from one patient to another is more likely.

I’ve been unable to locate online a first usage of “communicable” in the context of disease. Anyone have better ability to check, or an OED handy?

2

Yeah, I think Dr Markle can be forgiven for that sketchy sounding statement. Right? I wouldn’t be surprised to be proven wrong here, though.

3

Yep, I’m sure he’s a top doctor, but he should recognise his limits in the far more complex world of word things.

Communicable disease is in use in Australian newspapers by 1865 for both human and animal diseases. In 1867, reporting on cholera: The conclusions comprise the following points

1. That cholera is communicable from the diseased to the healthy.

2. That it may be communicated—

(a.) By persons in the state of developed cholera;

etc.

There are certainly notifiable diseases that doctors were obliged to report to health authorities, and these would generally have been the potentially epidemic or communicable disease, but he got it wrong as far as I can see.

4

From Merriam-Webster

Note: The terms communicable disease and contagious disease are often used interchangeably. However, communicable diseases such as malaria or schistosomiasis that are spread by contact with disease vectors are not typically considered to be “contagious” diseases since they cannot be spread from direct contact with another person.

First Known Use of communicable disease

1785, in the meaning defined above

5

The OED has this

d. Esp. of a disease: that can be transmitted directly or indirectly from one person or animal to another; infectious.

[1699 tr. M. Ettmüller Etmullerus Abridg’d i. xv. v. 255 The original of Contagion, is an active Spirituous ferment, easily communicable to the Spirits,…capable to propagate it self by a fermentative motion.]

1713 W. Cockburn Symptoms Gonorrhoea i. 2 It is infectious, and communicable by either of the Sexes to the other.

1755 Monthly Rev. Feb. 134 The plague is not communicable but by the contact of, or approach to, a person apparently infected with it.

6

Funny, I thought the exact same thing when I listened to the podcast last week (it was a very good one).

7

Yes, I enjoyed the podcast! But spending time on this board in my websurfing youth set certain alarm parameters that have remained ever since, and his statement tripped one of them.

Thanks, all!