<b>Day fever</b> – Fever lasting one day; sweating sickness.
<b>Debility</b> – Abnormal bodily weakness or feebleness; decay of strength. This was a term descriptive of a patient’s condition and of no help in making a diagnosis. Lack of movement or staying in bed. Synonym: asthenia.
<b>Decrepitude</b> – Feebleness due to old age.
<b>Delirium tremens</b> – aka DTs; hallucination due to alcoholism.
<b>Dengue</b> – Infectious fever endemic to East Africa.
<b>Dentition</b> – Cutting of teeth, see teething.
<b>Deplumation</b> – Tumor of the eyelids which causes hair loss.
<b>Diary fever</b> – A fever that lasts one day.
<b>Diptheria</b> – An acute infectious disease caused by toxigenic strains of the bacillus Corynebacterium diphtheriae, acquired by contact with an infected person or a carrier of the disease. It was usually confined to the upper respiratory tract (throat) and characterized by the formation of a tough membrane (false membrane) attached firmly to the underlying tissue that would bleed if forcibly removed. In the nineteenth century the disease was occasionally confused with scarlet fever and croup.
<b>Distemper</b> – Usually animal disease with malaise, discharge from nose and throat, anorexia.
<b>Dock fever</b> – Yellow fever.
<b>Dropsy</b> – A contraction for hydropsy. Edema, the presence of abnormally large amounts of fluid in intercellular tissue spaces or body cavities. Abdominal dropsy is ascites; brain dropsy is hydrocephalus; and chest dropsy is hydrothorax. Cardiac dropsy is a symptom of disease of the heart and arises from obstruction to the current of blood through the heart, lungs, or liver. Anasarca is general fluid accumulation throughout the body.Edema (swelling), often caused by kidney or heart disease.
<b>Dropsy of the Brain</b> – Encephalitis.
<b>Dry Bellyache</b> – Lead poisoning.
<b>Dyscrasy</b> – An abnormal body condition.
<b>Dysentery</b> – A term given to a number of disorders marked by inflammation of the intestines (especially of the colon) and attended by pain in the abdomen, by tenesmus (straining to defecate without the ability to do so), and by frequent stools containing blood and mucus. The causative agent may be chemical irritants, bacteria, protozoa, or parasitic worms. There are two specific varieties: (1) amebic dysentery caused by the protozoan Entamoeba histolytica; (2) bacillary dysentery caused by bacteria of the genus Shigella. Dysentery was one of the most severe scourges of armies in the nineteenth century. The several forms of dysentery and diarrhea accounted for more than one-fourth of all the cases of disease reported during the first two years of the Civil War. Synonyms: flux, bloody flux, contagious pyrexia (fever), frequent griping stools.
<b>Dysorexy</b> – Reduced appetite.
<b>Dyspepsia</b> – Indigestion and heartburn. Heart attack symptoms; bad digestion.
<b>Dysury</b> – Difficulty in urination.
