concept
Catarrh
catarrh
also: катар
A vague nineteenth-century catch-all diagnosis for mucous-membrane inflammation, the narrator's own running (and comically over-treated) ailment throughout the diary.
Reading notes
- From the Diary of an Assistant Bookkeeper §3 catarrh
A vague nineteenth-century diagnostic catch-all for inflammation of a mucous membrane (here, the stomach), treated throughout the diary with a comic parade of folk remedies rather than any real medicine.