Plural of 'contagium'; the plural form of a contagious agent or the agents of contagion.
From Latin 'contagium' meaning contagious matter or disease transmission, with the Latin plural suffix '-a'. Used primarily in medical and historical contexts from the 16th-18th centuries.
Medieval and Renaissance doctors debated whether diseases spread through 'contagia' (tiny particles) or 'miasma' (bad air)—it took until germ theory in the 1800s to prove the contagia believers were right all along.
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