Zymotic disease

Zymotic diseases (from the Greek word ζυμοῦν zumoûn "to ferment") is a 19th-century medical term for acute infectious diseases, especially "chief fevers and contagious diseases (e.g. typhus and typhoid fevers, smallpox, scarlet fever, measles, erysipelas, cholera, whooping-cough, diphtheria, &c.)".