Plural form of dysentery; multiple instances or types of the intestinal disease characterized by severe diarrhea and inflammation.
Regular plural form of dysentery, formed by adding -ies. The singular dysentery comes from Greek dys- (bad) + entera (intestines), referring to the intestinal inflammation that defines the disease.
Historically, medical texts describe various 'dysenteries'—amoebic, bacterial, viral—because doctors noticed the disease came in different forms, even before they could identify what caused each type. Ancient physicians were doing epidemiology without microscopes.
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