melæna Path.
(mɪˈliːnə)
[a. mod.L. melæna, a. Gr. µέλαινα, fem. of µέλας black.]
In early use, the name of a disease (now no longer recognized), characterized by the evacuation from the bowels and vomiting from the stomach of dark bloody matter. Now used to designate these symptoms occurring in any disease.
| 1800 Cullen's Nosol. 226 Melæna. 1827 Abernethy Surg. Wks. I. 34 There is great reason for ascribing the discharges in the diseases called melæna to a vitiated secretion from the surface of the alimentary canal. 1834 Good's Study Med. (ed. 4) I. 339 note, We mean therefore by melæna, the occurrence, as a symptom, in any disease, of very dark-coloured, grumous, pitchy, often highly fetid evacuation by stool..or we use the word as the name of a disease, in which such evacuations..constitute the characteristic symptom. 1905 H. D. Rolleston Dis. Liver 272 Melæna in cirrhosis may depend on hæmorrhages from the mucosa of the intestines. |
b. concr. (See quot. 1858.)
| 1858 Copland Dict. Pract. Med. II. 827 Melæna.., discharges from the bowels, or from the stomach, or both by stool and by the mouth, of a black, or nearly black matter, consequent upon visceral or constitutional disease. 1897 Allbutt's Syst. Med. III. 530 In other cases the blood..is passed out per rectum as melæna. |