cholera
(ˈkɒlərə)
Forms: 4 colora, 4, 6 colera, 7– cholera.
[a. L. cholera:—Gr. χολέρα, used by Hippocrates, Aretæus, etc., as name of a disorder = sense 2 below. (For derivation, and history in Latin, see choler). Taken into Eng. in the med.L. sense, as a variant of choler bile. Through the translation of Pliny and other classical L. authors, c 1600, the word was restored to its Gr. and earlier L. signification, as name of the disease, sense 2. This is the historical sense; the malignant or Asiatic cholera, with which the name is now specially associated, having been so called from the general resemblance of its symptoms to those of aggravated cases of the original or European cholera.]
† 1. a. = choler 1; bile. Obs.
| c 1386 Chaucer Nun's Pr. T. 108 This dreem, which ye han met to-nyght, Cometh of the greet superfluytee Of youre rede Colera [v.r. colere]. 1398 Trevisa Barth. De P.R. iv. vi. (1495) 89 In the humours is one partye that is lyght and comyth vpwarde . and that is colera. Ibid. iv. x, Some colera is kyndely and somme unkyndely. 1525 Dr. Sampson Lett. to Wolsey in MS. Cott. Vesp. iii. 56 b, When your grace is movyd with colera, such words passith yow in a fume and hast. 1561 Hollybush Hom. Apoth. 1 b If the headake commeth of colera, that is of hote and dry complexion. |
† b. black cholera, melancholy: see choler 4.
| 1527 Andrew Brunswyke's Distyll. Waters C iij b, The black colera, that is melancolye. 1561 Hollybush Hom. Apoth. 16 a, If the perbreakinge commeth of the black Colera. |
2. a. A disorder, attended with bilious diarrhœa, vomiting, stomach-ache, and cramps. It generally occurs in late summer and early autumn, and is rarely fatal to adults. cholera infantum, a once common and often fatal diarrhœa of young children prevailing in summer months.
In early times called also the disease cholera, and cholera morbus, to distinguish it from sense 1; now called cholera nostras, bilious cholera, British cholera, English cholera, European cholera, and summer cholera, to distinguish it from sense 3.
| [1565–78 Cooper Thesaurus, Cholera..the humour called Choler. Also a sicknesse of the stomacke, with a troublous flixe and vomite..the cholerike passyon.] 1601 Holland Pliny xx. viii, For the disease Cholera [Pliny has In cholera quoque] wherin choler is so outragious, that it purgeth vncessantly both vpward and downeward. 1667 N. Fairfax in Phil. Trans. II. 550 She falls into a right-down Cholera. 1725 N. Robinson Th. Physick 103 A Cholera is a Convulsive Motion of the Stomach and Guts, in which the Biliose Excrements are discharg'd in great Quantities both upwards and downwards. 1745 Gentl. Mag. 91 A cheap and effectual medicine to cure the Cholera or Colick. 1804 Med. Jrnl. XII. 468 Diarrhœa and dysentery have more frequently occurred than cholera. 1829 B. Hall Travels N. Amer. III. 389 The illness of our little girl, whose long exposure to the noxious air of the great rivers, had given her a complaint..called by the ominous name of Cholera Infantum. 1860 Mrs. Carlyle Lett. III. 33, I..have been hindered by..an attack of British cholera. 1886 Buck's Handbk. Med. Sci. II. 135/1 The line of demarcation between cholera infantum and the ordinary summer diarrhœa, entero⁓colitis, cannot always be sharply drawn. 1887 Hoblyn Dict. Med., The English or European form of Cholera is accompanied by bile: the Indian is without bile. 1895 Outing (U.S.) XXVI. 405/2 You are forced to wish that cholera-infantum had been more prevalent sixty years ago. 1961 Brit. Med. Dict. 299/1 Cholera infantum, summer diarrhoea, acute gastro-enteritis of children. |
b. cholera morbus.
| 1704 J. Harris Lex. Techn., Cholera morbus, is a depraved motion of the Ventricle and the Guts, whereby the Bilious Excrements are discharged. 1710 J. Taylor Lett. H. Walpole in 11th Rep. Hist. MSS. Comm. (1887) App. iv. 67 Your brother..is very well recovered from his late sudden illness call'd Collero Morbus. 1800 Med. Jrnl. IV. 566 With the symptoms of kine-pox was joined a cholera morbus. 1860 Mayne Expos. Lex., Cholera biliosa..or Cholera morbus, a common bilious disease familiarly known in most countries. |
† c. Applied by ancient writers to jaundice.
| 1607 Topsell Four-f. Beasts 300 Two kindes of jaundise called of them ‘cholera’. |
3. A malignant disease (not of bilious nature), endemic in India and from time to time epidemic in other parts of the world. It is characterized by violent vomiting, purging with watery rice-coloured evacuations, severe cramps, and collapse, death often occurring in a few hours.
(A terrible outbreak of this disease began in India in 1816–17, and, extending year by year over an increasing area westward, at length reached Europe in 1831 and N. America in 1832. After rivalling the great pestilences of former ages in the mortality which it produced, it abated, or retreated back to India, after 1837.)
In earlier use, and sometimes still, distinguished as Asiatic cholera, catarrhal cholera, epidemic cholera, Indian cholera, malignant cholera, Oriental cholera, serous cholera, and spasmodic cholera; but since its first invasion of England in 1831–2 this disease has more and more appropriated the simple name.
cholera morbus, which originally belonged to sense 2 to distinguish it from sense 1, has also been in modern times vulgarly used to distinguish this from sense 2.
| [1698 Fryer Acc. E. India & P. 113–4 (Y.) The Diseases reign according to the Seasons..In the extreme Heats, Cholera Morbus.] 1819 (title) Reports on the Epidemic Cholera (Bombay). 1831 Blackw. Mag. Feb. 397/1 The Cholera Morbus, which has lately come across the Caucasus from Persia to St. Petersburg. 1832 Ibid. Mar. 426/1 They..shew all the symptoms of Malignant Cholera. 1833 Christie Epidemic Cholera 83 The Indian Cholera, or Cholera Asphixia of Scott, consisting of a violent discharge of the mucous membranes generally. Ibid. 99 May be employed in the catarrhal cholera. 1849 R. T. Claridge Cold Water & Friction-cure (1869) 181 Asiatic Cholera.—On the first appearance of cholera symptoms, which are generally those of languor and chilliness. 1864 Knight Passages Work. Life II. 172 The Cholera-morbus had come to England..In the middle of February, 1832, cases of cholera were first observed in London. 1877 Morley Crit. Misc., Ht. Martineau (1878) 260 The times were bad; cholera was abroad. 1881 Syd. Soc. Lex., Cholera morbus, a synonym of malignant cholera. |
4. chicken cholera (sometimes fowl cholera): an infectious disease of chickens, very destructive in the poultry farms of France: so called from its prevalence during a cholera epidemic, but in no way akin to either of the preceding diseases.
| 1882 in Syd. Soc. Lex. |
5. attrib. and Comb., as cholera-camp, cholera-cell, cholera-fluid, cholera-hospital, cholera-patient, cholera-pill, cholera-secretion, etc.; cholera belt, a waistband of flannel or silk worn as a preventive against stomachic ailments; cholera-fever, ‘a febrile condition into which cases of choleraic diarrhœa pass’; cholera-fungus, the name given to certain fungi and fungoid appearances occurring in the dejections of those suffering from malignant cholera; cholera-typhoid, ‘the secondary fever of malignant cholera’ (Syd. Soc. Lex.).
| 1832 Gen. P. Thompson Exerc. (1842) II. 30 A cholera patient is denied a drop of water. 1833 Christie Epidemic Cholera 35 The discharges always consist entirely of a peculiar fluid, which has been very appropriately named the cholera secretion. 1843 Graves Clin. Med. 699 Used in the Cholera Hospital. 1848 in Medical Hist. (1957) I. 217 Each soldier is to be provided with two cholera belts as part of his Necessaries. 1864 E. A. Parkes Man. Pract. Hygiene xiii. 356 Cholera belts are made of flannel, and fold twice over the abdomen. 1883 Daily News 31 July 5/7 A cholera camp is being prepared near Mokattam. 1886 Fagge Princ. & Pract. Med. I. 296 The reaction-stage of Cholera often presents a grave complication, which is known as Cholera-Typhoid. 1906 Mrs. Beeton Househ. Managem. xx. 1853 The so-called ‘Cholera Belt’ is a regulation garment in the kit of every British soldier on Indian service. 1961 D. Bates Fly-Switch from Sultan i. 9 Cholera-belts and spine-pads were other mistakes. There was a shiny-faced colonel who had been in India in the nineties... Anyway, he was very keen on cholera-belts (to prevent a chill on the tummy in the treacherous early hours). |
Hence choleˌraiˈzation, the artificial communication of cholera to the lower animals (Syd. Soc. Lex.). choleraˈphobia [f. Gr. -ϕοβία, f. ϕόβ-ος fear], dread of cholera. choleraˈphonia [f. Gr. ϕωνή voice], the feeble, hoarse or squeaking voice which accompanies the collapse stage of Asiatic cholera.
| 1866 A. Flint Princ. Med. (1880) 563 Persons..under nervous excitement, imagine that they are about to be attacked, when no symptoms of the disease are present. These have been aptly called cases of choleraphobia. |