subs. phr. (American).—The ‘Dengué,’ a malarious fever of the South: either from the ‘pain in the bones,’ of which the patients complain, or from the great debility which follows the attack; both reasons have been assigned for the appellation (BARTLETT).
1862. New York Tribune, 16 May. ‘Letter from Cincinnati.’ The warm weather is adding to this the typhoid, the bilious, and another fever, to which the natives [of the South-western States] give the name (said to be very graphic) of BREAKBONE, in which every bone in the body feels as if it were broken. It is a cousin-german to the typhus.
