Sobre la histeria listeria y el papel de las fuentes digitales para la reconstrucción de la historia del léxico médico.

Résumé

The objective of this paper is to study a series of medical terms and their impact on society. Specifically, we will analyze the bundle of eponymics derivatives from the inquiries of british surgeon Joseph Lister (1827-1912), that have been published in the Spanish language during the last century. Among them stands out, as we will explain, the listeria voice, but also the alarm or social panic that this triggers: the so-called «histeria listeria», an expression that became popular in the late twentieth century and proliferated among the international press. Indeed, as we will certify, the digital newspaper archives and libraries (BDH, BVPH, HNDM, among others) are revealed as an essential resource for historians of the language and diachronic lexicologists, in general, as well as for the reconstruction of the history of the medical lexicon in Spanish, in particular.