In early 1921, my father's maternal grandmother died of quinsy, which is severe, strep-induced tonsillitis (peritonsillar abscess), usually on one side. Here's the description from her obituary:
[She] died at the...hospital at 11 o'clock Wednesday night after a short illness of quinsy. [She] was taken ill on Sunday morning. On Monday, her condition being more serious, a consultation of physicians was held and everything possible done for her relief. The following morning however, it was deemed advisable to remove her to the hospital, where she died late Wednesday night. Her case was pronounced the most serious one of quinsy which any of the local physicians have known in their practice.
She was 29 years old. My grandmother was 10.
My great-grandmother's bier. Her funeral was held in her family's
home, which was in a second-floor apartment along Main Street
in the business district of her upstate New York city. It's hard to imagine
someone holding a funeral in such a setting today.
Finding out what quinsy was made me think about all the other old-fashioned names one reads for medical conditions in primary sources or historical fiction. Here are modern translations of a few of them, from Merriam Webster and VeryWell.
Ague: an infectious fever with chills and sweating. Associated with malaria.
Apoplexy: stroke.
Bloody flux: dysentery
Camp fever, jail fever: typhus
Consumption: tuberculosis, of course.
Croup: "an obstruction caused by swelling of the larynx, trachea, and bronchi that occurs in children as a result of a virus and is, by definition, 'marked by episodes of difficult breathing and low-pitched cough resembling the bark of a seal.'" I coughed like this as a child, and still do sometimes when I'm sick. I thought croup was synonymous with pertussis (whooping cough), but I guess it's used more broadly for any bronchial swelling-type cough. It sounds like it may have also been used for cases of diphtheria and strep.
Dropsy: edema.
French pox: syphilis.
Grippe: could be any viral contagious illness, but most likely influenza.
Horrors: I haven't heard of this one before. Depression, or (separately), the shivering from a fever.
Lockjaw: tetanus. I grew up using this term, and fearing that I had this every time I scratched myself on a rusty object.
Lumbago: back pain.
It's interesting that many other common diseases and conditions never had different commonly used common-sounding names in English, as far as I can tell: diphtheria, malaria (though it was sometimes vaguely called congestive fever), cholera, pleurisy, asthma... and that others have common names that are still in use even though they have more current medical names (yellow fever, smallpox).
3 comments:
I remember learning apoplexy from Treasure Island in sixth grade. I just noticed (thanks, Gutenberg) that the horrors are in there too. In there it sounds like the DTs: “ If I don’t have a dram o’ rum, Jim, I’ll have the horrors; I seen some on ’em already. I seen old Flint in the corner there, behind you; as plain as print, I seen him; and if I get the horrors, I’m a man that has lived rough, and I’ll raise Cain.”
I just remembered catarrh, which I’m surprised to learn is just “inflammation of a mucous membrane” (Merriam-Webster).
Not too late, even a century later, to say I’m sorry for the loss in your family.
Yes, the DTs were also mentioned on another site as one of the meanings for the horrors. And I did see catarrh listed, too - I was remembering that as something like heavy coatings of something in the mouth, or a black tongue? I might be confusing it with something else.
Post a Comment