English sicknessn.

1707 R. Pitt (title) The calamities of all the English sickness; and the sufferings of the apothecaries from their abounded increase.

1837 M. F. Dickson Souvenirs Summer in Germany I. xv. 302 ‘The Englische krankheit.’ ‘The what?’ we exclaimed in dismay at hearing of a malady peculiarly distinguished as the ‘English sickness’.

1868 W. L. Gage tr. C. L. Mundt Marie Antoinette & Son 255/2 The English sickness which afflicted the child had distorted his limbs.

1939 A. M. Schlesinger O. A. Brownson iii. 90 The English sickness had gone far beyond drugs or calisthenics; it would respond..only to bloodletting in the ‘most dreaded of all wars, the war of the poor against the rich’.

1999 Ottawa Citizen (Nexis) 5 Nov. f 13 In 1671, the affliction we call rickets was first described by Francis Glisson, an Englishman. In Holland, it became known as Engelse ziekte, which translates as English sickness.

2006 L. L. Chaikin Daughter of Silk xxi. 268 Whatever poison of the blood was, the English called it a French sickness; the French called it an English sickness.

1855 New Monthly Mag. May 46 Our contemporaries of the higher classes have recently, but somewhat energetically, adopted, for the time being, an exclusive stamp—and that is the Anglomania, or English sickness.

1963 Economist 14 Sept. 886/2 An article..called ‘The English Sickness’ [sc. isolationism].

1969 Daily Tel. 18 Apr. 18 The only obvious result of so much effort..has been an abysmal economic growth rate... Humiliatingly, the English Sickness has become almost a by-word for economic inefficiency and economic failure.

1970 Sci. Jrnl. Apr. 26/1 ‘The English sickness’ is a term widely used in Europe to describe high levels of absenteeism, restrictive practices and wildcat strikes.

2000 G. Pearson in S. Greenfield & G. Osborn Law & Sport in Contemp. Society iii. x. 195 I know of my own knowledge that the foreign press call this particular form of mindless [football] violence ‘the English sickness’.