There’s no shortage of theories on how chicken pox got its name, but two are more credible than others. One is that the teerm derives from cicer, the latin word for chickpea, which a chicken pox pustule resembles. The other suggests it comes from the Old English word for itch, gican. Be they itchy pox or chickpea pox, one thing is certain: chicken pox doesn’t come from chickens. Pox, or pocks, is an ancient word for any disease characterised by pustules on the skin’s surface. Aside from chicken pox and small pox, there is also the lesser known cow pox- carried by rodents but often transmitted to human via contaminated cows during milking and rare from of smallpox seen in Africa called monkey pox.
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