Obs. Also 7 -luch(e)o. [a. F. coqueluche hood, etc. (obs. It. cocolluccio, f. cocollo, L. cucullus hood, cowl), applied orig. to a kind of grippe or epidemic catarrh, for which patients covered their heads with a coqueluche.] A name given in the 16th c. to an epidemic catarrh, and afterwards to hooping-cough.
1611. Cotgr., Coqueluche … also the Coquelucheo, or new disease; which troubled the French about the yeares 1510, and 1557: and vs but a while agoe.
1706. Phillips (ed. Kersey), Coquelucho (Ital.), a kind of violent Cough.
1736. Bailey, Houshold Dict., 209. Coqueluche a cough which most frequently siezes young children … as soon as it siezes them, they fall into fits, and are all in a muck sweat, and several have died of it for want of present relief.
1749. T. Short, Chronol. Hist. Air, etc. I. 203. The Disease called Coccoluche, or Coccolucio, (because the Sick wore a Cap or Covering close all over their Heads) came from the Island Melite in Africa, into Sicily.
1871. Sir T. Watson, Princ. & Pract. Med. (ed. 5), II. 68. It [hooping-cough] has received a variety of names: chin-cough; kink-hoast; coqueluche.
