quartan

English

Etymology

From 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)

1. (medicine, historical) A fever whose symptoms recur every four days.
   • 1855, Sir Richard Burton, Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah, Dover, published 1964, page 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)

1. (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, Oxfordshire: Printed by John Lichfield and Iames Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC, page 218:

     Pork, of all meats, is […] naught for queasy stomachs, insomuch that frequent use of it may breed a quartan ague.

Coordinate terms

• quotidian
• tertian

Further reading

• quartan fever on Wikipedia.Wikipedia