quartan

English

Etymology

Anglo-Norman quartaine, Old French quartaine, from Latin quartāna (short for febris quartana), noun use of feminine form of quartānus (“recurring every four days”), from quartus (“fourth”).

Pronunciation

(UK) IPA^(key): /ˈkwɔːtən/
(US) IPA^(key): /ˈkwɔɹtən/

Noun

quartan (plural quartans)

(medicine, historical) A fever whose symptoms recur every four days.
- 1855, Sir Richard Burton, Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah, Dover 1964, p. 54:
  an Egyptian at Alexandria, whose quartan resisted the strongest applications of European physic, was effectually healed by the actual cautery, which a certain Arab Shaykh applied to the crown of his head.

Adjective

quartan (not comparable)

(medicine) Recurring every four days; especially in designating a form of malaria with such symptoms.
- 1621, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy, Oxford: Printed by Iohn Lichfield and Iames Short, for Henry Cripps, OCLC 216894069; The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd corrected and augmented edition, Oxford: Printed by John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, 1624, OCLC 54573970, (please specify |partition=1, 2, or 3):
  , New York, 2001, p.218:
  Pork, of all meats, is […] naught for queasy stomachs, insomuch that frequent use of it may breed a quartan ague.