[L. vīrus slimy liquid, poison, offensive odor or taste. Hence also F., Sp., Pg. virus.]
In Lanfranc’s Cirurgie (c. 1400), 77 the word, explained as ‘a thin venomy quitter,’ is merely taken over from the Latin text.
1. Venom, such as is emitted by a poisonous animal. Also fig.
1599. Broughton’s Lett., iv. 14. You … haue … spit out all the virus and poyson you could conceiue, in the abuse of his … person.
1702. R. Mead, Poisons, 26. The Story of Cleopatra … pouring the Virus of an Asp into a Wound made in her Arm by her own Teeth.
1728. Chambers, Cycl., s.v. Viper, By the Microscope, the Virus [of the viper] was found to consist of minute Salts in continual Motion.
1867. Dk. Argyll, Reign of Law, i. 37. That the deadly virus shall in a few minutes curdle the blood.
1879. R. T. Smith, Basil Gt., ix. 111. He it was who hollowed the minute sting of the bee to shed its virus through.
2. Path. A morbid principle or poisonous substance produced in the body as the result of some disease, esp. one capable of being introduced into other persons or animals by inoculation or otherwise and of developing the same disease in them.
1728. Chambers, Cycl., Virulent, a Term apply’d to any thing that yields a Virus; that is, a corrosive or contagious Pus.
1771. Smollett, Humph. Cl., To Sir W. Philip, 3 Oct. When he examined the egesta, and felt his pulse, he declared that much of the virus was discharged.
1799. Med. Jrnl., I. 448. Whether opium applied externally, may or may not prove an antidote to the canine virus. Ibid. (1800), III. 352. The pustules … contain a perfect Small-pox virus.
1826. S. Cooper, First Lines Surg. (ed. 5), 165. In consequence of the virus being mixed with the saliva of the rabid animal.
1878. T. Bryant, Pract. Surg., I. 79. It should never be forgotten that it is the virus which infects the system.
1899. Allbutt’s Syst. Med., VIII. 602. Possibly there is some virus acting on the nerve-centres.
attrib. 1860. W. T. Fox, in Trans. Obstetr. Soc., II. 210. The general symptoms being the result of virus action. Ibid., 228. This latter action is alike common to all forms of virus disease.
3. fig. A moral or intellectual poison, or poisonous influence.
1778. Warner, in Jesse, Selwyn & Contemp. (1844), III. 317. Venice is a stink-pot, charged with the very virus of hell!
1807. Southey, H. K. White, 12. As if there were not enough of the leaven of disquietude in our natures, without inoculating it with this dilutement—this vaccine virus of envy.
a. 1834. Coleridge, Shaks. Notes (1875), 189. The corrosive virus which inoculates pride with a venom not its own.
a. 1884. M. Pattison, Mem. (1885), 239. The clerical virus would have lingered in the system.
4. Violent animosity; virulence.
1866. Alger, Solit. Nat. & Man, IV. 360. Two classes of men, however, he did hate with especial relish and virus.
