raphanian.
/rəˈfeɪnɪə/, U.S. /ræˈfeɪniə/ Medicine. Now historical.
A disease occurring in epidemics and characterized by fever, delirium, and seizures or muscle spasms, originally attributed to the contamination of grain with seeds of the wild radish, Raphanus raphanistrum.Raphania is now usually considered to have been a form of ergotism, but has also been identified as a viral encephalitis or encephalomyelitis.
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the world > health and disease > ill health > a disease > disorders caused by poisons > [noun] > by infected food
beestings1607
raphania1773
food poisoning1856
botulism1858
ergotism1864
sausage-poisoning1876
Gaertner1897
grain-intoxication1897
grain-poisoning1897
tyrotoxism1900
salmonellosis1913
ichthyosarcotoxism1953
Salmonella1962
1773 W. Butter Treat. Kinkcough 21 The hysteria and raphania, two diseases evidently of the first passages.
1799 Med. & Physical Jrnl. 1 63 Dr. Unzer advises the use of emetics in the following dangerous cases,..palsy of the tongue, raphania, in the hooping cough, [etc.].
1826 Lancet 12 Aug. 619/1 Wichmann has distinguished the great, or acute,..St. Vitus's dance from another disease, viz., raphania.
1847 H. E. Lloyd & B. G. Babington tr. E. von Feuchtersleben Princ. Med. Psychol. 51 At the beginning of the eighth decennium, raphania..became particularly prevalent.
1871 C. H. Hackley tr. T. Billroth Gen. Surg. Pathol. & Therapeutics 303 If bread be made from such grain, persons eating it are affected with peculiar symptoms, which are comprised under the name ergotismus or raphania.
1920 F. G. Crookshank in Lancet 20 Mar. 678/1 The contention put forward by me..that the ‘Kriebelkrankheit’ and raphania were really identical with the protean encephalomyelitis that almost invariably has preceded, attended, and followed the wide diffusions that we call influenza appears therefore fortified by the course of events.
1986 G. D. Ainsworth Introd. Hist. Med. & Vet. Mycol. viii. 126 A century later Carl Linnaeus though that admixture of the rye with radish (Raphanus) caused ergotism which he designated Raphania.
2003 J. R. Berger & I. C. Glitza in A. Nath & J. R. Berger Clin. Neurovirol. xxiv. 525 Crookshank..was convinced that the illness was not new. Among the similar epidemics that he identified were..Raphania (Sweden, 1754–1757, and Germany, 1824), and nona (Hungary, 1889).
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, December 2008; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1773