ABSTRACT
Chickenpox is a common childhood exanthem which most boys and girls contract while they are enrolled in kindergarten or the early years of grade school (Figure 1). Although the disease has been mentioned since ancient times, in the Middle Ages there was much confusion between the different pox afflictions, which included the scourages of large pox (syphilis) and smallpox (variola). Somewhere in between was an exanthem called varicella in French because it appeared to be a diminutive or benign form of the most malignant variola. In English-speaking countries, varicella was usually called chickenpox, possibly to better describe the size of the vesicular lesions as being similar to that of a chick pea (from the French, pois chiche). 1 The early descriptions of zoster also showed confusion with other vesicular diseases, in particular, recurrent herpes simplex infections. The term zoster was selected to describe the dermatomal exanthem because the usual location of the disease corresponded to the site of the belt (zoster) worn by a Greek warrior to secure his armor. The term herpes also has a Greek derivation and indicates something which creeps. Herpes zoster, therefore, identified an exanthem which crept around the midsection of an afflicted individual (Figure 2). In a similar vein, shingles is the anglicization of the middle French word chingle, which is a belt. Chickenpox in a young child. The vesicular lesions are just beginning to erupt about the face and will soon spread across the trunk and over the extremities. https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-u.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781351074926/b933ac4a-195a-4fac-93c7-485bf3d6c219/content/fig1_1.jpg"/> Zoster (shingles) in a boy. The vesicular rash began on the back and spread across the left chest in the distribution of the fifth thoracic dermatome. The rash stopped at mid chest. https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-u.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781351074926/b933ac4a-195a-4fac-93c7-485bf3d6c219/content/fig1_2.jpg"/>
