| sweating sickness | A disease characterised by fever and profuse sweating and associated with high mortality. It occurred in epidemic form five times in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in england, first in 1485 and last in 1551. The disease tended to occur during the summer and early autumn, attacking the relatively affluent adult male population. The aetiology was unknown. (hunter pr. The english sweating sickness, with particular reference to the 1551 outbreak in chester. Rev infect dis 1991;13(2):303-6, from abstract) (12 Dec 1998) |
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| Indian sickness | A generally fatal disease affecting chiefly children in the tropics, characterised by gangrenous ulceration of the rectum and anus, accompanied by frequent watery stools and tenesmus. Synonym: bicho, caribi, Indian sickness. (05 Mar 2000) |
| East African sleeping sickness | A disease of humans caused by Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense in eastern Africa from Ethiopia and Uganda south to Zimbabwe; it is clinically similar to Gambian trypanosomiasis but of shorter duration and more acute in form; patients suffer repeated episodes of pyrexia, become anaemic, and die commonly from cardiac failure. Synonym: acute African sleeping sickness, acute trypanosomiasis, East African sleeping sickness, East African trypanosomiasis. (05 Mar 2000) |
| Jamaican vomiting sickness | An acute and frequently fatal vomiting disease associated with central nervous system symptoms and marked hypoglycaemia, caused by eating unripe ackee fruit of Blighia spaida, a tree common in Jamaica. Synonym: Jamaican vomiting sickness. (05 Mar 2000) |
| falling sickness | <disease, neurology> The paroxysmal transient disturbances of brain function that may be manifested as episodic impairment or loss of consciousness, abnormal motor phenomena, psychic or sensory disturbances or perturbation of the autonomic nervous system. Symptoms are due to paroxysmal disturbance of the electrical activity of the brain. On the basis of origin, epilepsy is idiopathic (cryptogenic, essential, genetic) or symptomatic (acquired, organic). On the basis of clinical and electroencephalographic phenomenon, four subdivisions are recognised: 1. Grand mal epilepsy (major epilepsy, haut mal epilepsy) subgroups: generalised, focal (localised), jacksonian (rolandic) 2. Petit mal epilepsy 3. Psychomotor epilepsy (temporal lobe epilepsy, psychic, psychic equivalent or variant) subgroups: psychomotor proper (tonic with adversive or torsion movements or masticatory phenomena), automatic (with amnesia) and sensory (hallucinations or dream states or d굁. Vu) 4. Autonomic epilepsy (diencephalic), with flushing, pallor, tachycardia, hypertension, perspiration or other visceral symptoms. Synonym: epilepsia. Origin: Gr. Epilepsia = seizure (14 May 1997) |
| lambing sickness | A highly fatal metabolic disease of well-nourished ewes in the late stages of pregnancy, especially in ewes carrying twin lambs; it is caused by carbohydrate depletion of the blood and tissues, and is characterised by hypoglycaemia, ketonuria, fatty infiltration of the liver, rapid emaciation, coma, and a high death rate. Synonym: lambing paralysis, lambing sickness. (05 Mar 2000) |
| laughing sickness | See: pseudobulbar paralysis. (05 Mar 2000) |