They were highly contagious, spreading bacteria to other people.

For quotations using this term, see Citations:TNB.

Some of the boys down there still had their rifles and he'd be deader than mutton a second after he started to hooraw the herd.

Sir Francis Drake's ship at Deptford, my Lord Mayor's barge, and divers secret and unsuspected places, and there they make private shambles with kill-calf cruelty, and sheep slaughtering murder, to the abuse of Lent, the deceiving of the informers, and the great grief of every zealous fishmonger.