Copy 1

Treatise on the history, nature, and treatment of chincough; including a variety of cases and dissections. To which is subjoined, an enquiry into the relative mortality of the principal diseases of children, and the numbers who have died under ten years of age, in Glasgow, during the last thirty years / [Robert Watt].

  • Watt, Robert, 1774-1819.
Date:
1813
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Treatise on the history, nature, and treatment of chincough; including a variety of cases and dissections. To which is subjoined, an enquiry into the relative mortality of the principal diseases of children, and the numbers who have died under ten years of age, in Glasgow, during the last thirty years / [Robert Watt]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    22/402 (page 18)
    derived from a circumstance, which is not to be met with in a great proportion of cases, can- not with propriety be employed to express the whole genus. The term Kink-cough is mostly confined to Scotland. It is derived from the circumstance, that the.cough returns in paroxysms. ‘The first part of the term is a Scotch word, synonymous with fit or paroxysm, and is not applied to cough- ing alone; but to some other involuntary or con- vulsive motions, and particularly such as produce noise. Thus we speak of a kink of laughing, a kink of crying, &c. almost as readily as a kink of coughing. My objections to this term are, that it is provincial, difficult to be pronounced, and not sufficiently precise in its application. The word Chincough is the ancient English expression for the disease, though its origin seems to be much more obscure than that of the other two. Dr. Johnson thinks, that the first part of the term may probably come from the Dutch word kinckin, which signifies to pant. We shall find afterwards, that panting and_ breathlessness are very frequently symptoms of the disease, but still I cannot help thinking the derivation fanciful, if not improbable.