Talk:Morgellons

Pronunciation

Pronunciation? Rothorpe (talk) 00:22, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Added. —Stephen ^(Talk) 01:37, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Browne

The mention by Browne which originated the name is this, from the 1835 edition of his (much earlier) Letter to a Friend:

Hairs which have most amused me have not been in the face or head, but on the back, and not in men but children, as I long ago observed in that endemial distemper of little children in Languedoc, called the morgellons,² wherein they critically break out with harsh hairs on their backs, which takes off the unquiet symptoms of the disease, and delivers them from coughs and convulsions.

² morgellons.] See Picotus de Rheumatismo.

About this, a 1917 review in The Homeopathic World: A Monthly Journal, page 295, says:

Paraphrasing Sergeant Buzfuz, of Bardwell v. Pickwick fame, I can conscientiously say that in the whole course of my professional career I have never seen such a case, nor am I able to discover any reference to Morgellons in available French dictionaries, including old Cotgrave.

A 1964 compilation and review of his works by Geoffrey Keynes, Works, page 98, notes:

[Browne refrs] to 'that endemial Distemper of little children in Languedock, called the Morgellons', with the marginal note, 'See Picotus de Rheumatismo'. The nature of Morgellons had long been a puzzle to Browne's editors, but was fully elucidated by Dr C. E. Kellett in 1935. Dr Kellett identifies the disease with the condition otherwise known as Masquelons, though there are several other forms of the word.

And indeed, Jacques Guillemeau, Les oeuvres de chirurgie (1649), page 461, has:

DE LA GENERATION ET SORTIE DES POILS au dos & reins des Enfans, dit en Languedoc Masquelon, & des Latins Morbus Pilaris.

CHAPITRE LIX.

[…] ceste maladie qui vient aux enfans, laquelle est familiere au pays e Languedoc, qui se nomme en leur langage, Masquelon.

- -sche (discuss) 07:40, 23 October 2021 (UTC)