[Generally supposed to have been named from the mildness of the disease. (Fagge, Princ. & Pract. Med., I. 234, conjectures an allusion to chick-pease.)]
The common name for Varicella, a mild eruptive disease, bearing some resemblance to small-pox, which chiefly attacks children.
1727–38. Chambers, Cycl., s.v. Pox, Chicken Pox, a cutaneous disease, frequent in children, wherein the skin is covered with pustules like those of the small pox.
1800. Med. Jrnl., III. 440. Is there not the strongest probability that the swine and the chicken pox derived their origin, at some distant period, from the animals whose names they take…?
1809. Mar. Edgeworth, Manœuvring, i. (1831), 2. I have just heard that there is a shocking chicken-pox in the village.
b. Chicken-pock: the pustule of this disease.
1780. Hunter, Small Pox, in Phil. Trans., LXX. 134. Sometimes … there is a pitt in consequence of a chicken pock.
