Word: thrombus
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Smooth Flow. Most dreaded and suddenly fatal of all heart ailments are those due to bloodclotting, e.g., coronary thrombosis. For reasons not yet perfectly understood (too little exercise, poor metabolism, infection), blood cells sometimes begin to stick together to form a thrombus (a stationary clot). But the thrombus grows, may eventually let loose daughter clots (emboli) which swim on to lodge at vital bottlenecks in the blood stream. A thrombus which lodges in a coronary (heart) artery, blocking off the blood supply to the heart muscle, can kill within a few minutes; a clot in the brain causes a stroke...
...confused with embolism. A thrombus stays in one place; an embolus, which might be a blood clot, or a pocket of air or oil, moves through the blood stream. If an embolus settles down, it becomes a thrombus...