CHOLERA MORBUS.
BY W. W. JOHNSTON, M.D.
SYNONYMS.—Cholera nostras, Sporadic cholera, European or English cholera, Spasmodic cholera, Cholera biliosa, Passio cholerica, Cholerhagia, Trousse-galant, Die Gallenruhr, Brechruhr.
DEFINITION.—An affection of the gastro-intestinal mucous membrane characterized by violent abdominal pain, nausea, and sudden, violent, and incessant vomiting, and by purging of a watery fluid containing little albumen and bile; attended with spasms of the muscles of the abdomen and extremities, a pinched and sunken countenance, pallor, cyanosis, and coldness of the surface of the body; a feeble and rapid pulse, oppressed respiration, and great restlessness; dryness of the tongue, great thirst, and diminished or suppressed urinary secretion and a state approaching collapse, which may rarely prove fatal, but is, as a rule, followed by reaction.
HISTORY.—The term cholera has been in use since the time of Hippocrates, but he confounded with it every disease which seemed to him to come from acridity or corruption of humors, as colics and meteorism with constipation.1 He well described cholera morbus in saying that "it is a disease which appears in summer, due to imprudence in eating, at the same time as intermittent fever."2 If Celsus be correct in deriving the name from [Greek: cholê] "bile," and [Greek: reô] "I flow," it is more applicable to the disease now under consideration than to the Asiatic disease, as it is the bile which is absent in the colorless rice-water discharges of Asiatic cholera. Trallian and Ruysch, however, ascribe it to [Greek: cholêra] the rain-gutter of a house.
1 Append. au Traité du reg. les Maladies aigues, 19, ii. p. 495, ed. Littré.
2 Epidémies, lib. v., ed. Littré, 71, p. 247.
In the Old Testament mention is made of a disease resembling cholera morbus.3 Its true pathogeny was known to Galen, and it was accurately described by Celsus,4 and Aretæus5 mentions the nature of the discharges and its frequency among young people and children.