1. A highly fatal infectious febrile disease of hot climates, characterized by vomiting, constipation, fatty degeneration of the liver, jaundice, etc.
1748. J. Lining, in Ess. Phys. & Lit. (1756), II. 370. That fever, which continues two or three days, and terminates without any critical discharge,… and which is soon succeeded with an icteritious colour in the white of the eyes and the skin, vomiting, hæmorrhages, &c. … is called in America, the yellow fever.
1758. Let. to Mayor of ——, 47. Seamen seized by the yellow Fever in the West Indies.
1825. Southey, Let. to John May, 16 March, in Life (1849), I. 156. He had had the yellow fever three times, and … still bore strong vestiges of it in his complexion.
1877. F. T. Roberts, Handbk. Med. (ed. 3), I. 204. Most authorities hold that true yellow-fever is of the continued type.
1898. P. Manson, Trop. Diseases, vii. 138. Inoculations by the bites of mosquitoes previously fed on yellow fever patients.
1898. Jrnl. Sch. Geog. (U.S.), Oct., 300. When a sufficient altitude is reached, the yellow fever zone is left behind.
2. In various allusive uses, chiefly humorous.
1854. Poultry Chron., I. 582. After this we got the yellow fever, and the clear buff and silver cinnamon fever. We did not care for a thing except speckless colour.
c. 1856. Denham Tracts (1892), I. 336. When the ‘Runch’ is in bloom the appearance is called ‘the Yellow Fever.’
1867. Smyth, Sailor’s Word-bk., Yellow fever, a cant term for drunkenness at Greenwich Hospital; the sailors when punished wearing a parti-coloured coat, in which yellow predominates.
1884. Illustr. Sydney News, 26 Aug., 5/3. He said I had the yellow fever [i.e., for gold], and was to go to the diggings to get cured.
