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. 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. = 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 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.
In early times called also the Disease Cholera, and Cholera morbus, to distinguish it from sense 1; now called Cholera nostras, Bilious, British, English, European, 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.
1860. Mrs. Carlyle, Lett., III. 33. I … have been hindered by … an attack of British cholera.
1887. Hoblyn, Dict. Med., The English or European form of cholera is accompanied by bile; the Indian is without bile or urine.
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-colored evacuations, severe cramps, and collapse, death often occurring in a few hours.
(A terrible outbreak of this disease began in India in 1816–7, 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, Catarrhal, Epidemic, Indian, Malignant, Oriental, Serous, 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, was the result of moral evil in the subjects. Ibid. (1832), March, 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. 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, -cell, -fluid, -hospital, -patient, -pill, -secretion, etc.; 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.
1883. Daily News, 31 July, 5/7. A cholera camp is being prepared near Mokattam for seven or eight thousand people.
1886. Fagge, Princ. & Pract. Med., I. 296. The reaction stage of cholera often presents a grave complication, which is known as ‘cholera-typhoid.’
Hence Choleraization, the artificial communication of cholera to the lower animals (Syd. Soc. Lex.). Choleraphobia [f. Gr. -φοβία, f. φόβ-ος fear], dread of cholera. Choleraphonia [f. Gr. φωνή voice], the feeble, hoarse or squeaking voice that 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.
