Citations:English disease

English citations of English disease

Bronchitis

• 1969, United States. Congress. House. Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Cigarette Labeling and Advertising, 1969: Hearings, Ninety-first Congress, First Session

  The present status of the cigarette smoke theory of the origin of the "English Disease" in the current antismoking literature in England.

• 1973, G. Ffrench, Occupational Health, Springer Science & Business Media →ISBN, page 84

  By the same mechanism you can soon sour your stomach, if you are sensitive enough, by imagining yourself in the saloon bar of a pub or the smoking section of a bus or train – before long you will hear the racking, bubbling exhausting cough of the man with chronic bronchitis or “the English disease”.

• 1976, Jay Robert Nash, Darkest Hours, Rowman & Littlefield →ISBN, page 344

  "The English Disease" has been known for centuries in Europe as a killer that strikes the lungs. The noxious fumes given off by tens of thousands of chimneys mix with fog, and when stalled warm-air masses collect over London, hundreds and sometimes thousands of persons, mostly the elderly, die.

• 2011, George Fabian, Karl Marx Prince of Darkness, Xlibris Corporation →ISBN, page 269

  Little wonder that a year before death he [Karl Marx] diagnosed himself as suffering from the “accursed English disease” that impaired his intellect.

Creative or professional laziness

• 1984, Pat Booth, Master photographers: the world's great photographers on their art and technique, Clarkson Potter

  The English disease is that they have no respect for their own talent and when they do recognize it they don't know how to cultivate it. The English are bitter and jealous of everyone else as well as being arrogant and lazy.

• 1997, R. T. Kerslake, Time and the Hour, →ISBN, page 265:

  Nigerians had one symptom of the English disease very badly; among the well-educated there were few who were willing to take a management job in industry, most preferring law, medicine or government service in which money came more easily.

• 2007, Sheila Hale, The Man who Lost His Language: A Case of Aphasia, Jessica Kingsley Publishers →ISBN, page 28

  John used to tell his students that Castiglione was indirectly responsible for the English Disease: laziness.

• 2009, Kathleen Hardesty Doig, Dorothy Medlin, British-French Exchanges in the Eighteenth Century, Cambridge Scholars Publishing →ISBN, page 35

  Morellet himself once commented on this disparity, suggesting that Shelburne suffered from the English disease, aversion to writing, while admitting the French were the most chattering and scribbling nation in the universe.

Depression, especially when suicidal

• 1773, The Lady's Magazine Or Entertaining Companion for the Fair Sex:

  Suicide, from its frequency in Britain, is emphatically termed by foreigners, the "English disease," and has even found a place under this denomination in the medical and nosological arrangement of diseases of the melancholy class"

• 1986, Derek Jarrett, England in the Age of Hogarth, Yale University Press →ISBN, page 177

  Some thirty years later the Earl of Pembroke told one of his friends ironically about a French Jesuit who had caught the 'English disease' after spending some years in Salisbury and had finished up by hanging himself á la anglaise.

• 2007, Susan K. Morrissey, Suicide and the Body Politic in Imperial Russia, Cambridge University Press →ISBN, page 71

  In two months, two sons ended their lives so shamefully. There is a danger that this English disease will come into fashion with us.

• 2014, Anita Virga, Paolo L. Bernardini, Voglio morire! Suicide in Italian Literature, Culture, and Society 1789-1919, →ISBN:

  Since the early modern times, England has been seen as the homeland of suicide, conceived of as the extreme result of the so-called “English disease,” i.e., a form of melancholy, later known as depression, typical of gloomy climates.

Gambling

• 2012, Julia Allen, Swimming with Dr Johnson and Mrs Thrale: Sport and Exercise in Eighteenth-century England, Lutterworth Press →ISBN, page 50

  This was the eighteenth century and the 'English disease' was a raging epidemic. All classes and both sexes gambled [...]

• 2006, Betina Krahn, The Book of True Desires, Penguin →ISBN

  “I do not have a gambling problem,” he said, displaying a surprising array of leg strength and dexterity as he nudged and kicked aside brush.

  “Of course you do. It's the English disease”.

• 2013 May 24, Neil Ashton, “The English disease: Betting is prevalent in the Premier League, as one boss admits 'half his players' would be in trouble if the authorities looked into their habits”, in Daily Mail‎^[1]:

Gout

• 1991, Mosaic

  The English disease, gout, was thought to result from excessive consumption of simple roast beef as well as elaborate puits d'amour.

• 1989, Joe Rosenblatt, The Kissing Goldfish of Siam, Exile Editions, Ltd. →ISBN, page 93

  The critters attacked everything from nymphomania, excessive masturbatory impulses, skin disorders, whooping cough, venereal diseases, black eyes, warts, and the "English disease" - as Arnie called gout.

• 2014, Tristan Jones, Outward Leg, Open Road Media →ISBN

  “You got the English disease. [...] Ja, here it is—gout!”

Football hooliganism

• 2002, Richard William Cox, Dave Russell, Wray Vamplew, Encyclopedia of British Football, Psychology Press →ISBN, page 102

  England's appearance at the finals provoked outrage as it coincided with the first major incidents at international tournaments of what came to he known as the English disease - hooliganism.

• 2005, Nick Hornby, Fever Pitch, Penguin UK →ISBN

  It definitely wasn't because I couldn't take a young lady to stand on the North Bank among the thugs (even an Italian, a Juventus fan, three and a half months after Heysel): as we had seen in May, the people she spent her time with on Sunday afternoons were familiar with the symptoms of the English disease, and she had already waved away my clumsy and pious apologies on behalf of the Liverpool fans.

• 2010, Kenny Dalglish, My Liverpool Home, Hachette UK →ISBN

  When it also became apparent that a lot of the fans arrested didn't have Liverpool addresses, the thought crossed my mind that maybe they were supporters of other English clubs, simply using a crowded European Cup final as an opportunity for hooliganism. This was the mid-Eighties when the English disease, as the continentals called it, was at its ugly peak.

(Russia) Haemophilia

• 2006, Robert Alexander, Rasputin's Daughter, Penguin →ISBN

  It was that the Heir Tsarevich Aleksei Nikolaevich suffered from the English disease. He was a bleeder.

• 2007, Carolly Erickson, Alexandra: The Last Tsarina, Macmillan →ISBN, page 147

  When they saw that the bleeding from the tiny wound did not stop in a reasonable period of time Alix and Nicky were anxious. They knew the signs, and feared the worst. It might be the bleeding disease, the English disease, the terrible disease that had killed Irene's son Henry and that made her son Waldemar a virtual invalid much of the time.

• 2008, Alan R. Rushton, Royal Maladies: Inherited Diseases in the Ruling Houses of Europe, Trafford Publishing →ISBN, page 12

  It became clear to the family that he had inherited the “English disease” and was suffering from hemophilia.

Homosexuality

• 1973, Rachel Billington, Cock Robin: or, A fight for male survival, page 109:

  Didn't they call it the English disease ? I certainly had no wish to be linked with him in that particular category. From an early age my slender frame and delicate skin had led to misunderstandings.

• 1991, Michael Wilcox, Outlaw in the Hills: A Writer's Year, →ISBN, page 98:

  The true 'English disease' is not homosexuality, or a fondness of flagellation. It is sexual immaturity born of single sex boarding schools.

• 2011, Tomaž Šalamun, Michael Biggins, The Blue Tower, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt →ISBN, page 19

  My mother prayed that I not catch the “English disease.” Nigeria is homophobic, and you?

• 2012, Anthony Burgess, Earthly Powers, Random House →ISBN, page 179

  We call this thing a disease and sometimes the English disease. [...] 'Homosexuality is the term,' I said. 'It is not a disease.'

Hypochondria

• 1885, Weekly Medical Review - Volume 11, page 488:

  The etiology of hypochondriasis is favored by faulty eduction (anxious attention to every little ailment of the child), by hereditary tendency, by dark, cloudy weather (it is a frequent ailment in England and therefore known as the "English disease," and "spleen,") by disappointments, loss of occupation, by digestive troubles, congestion of the portal system, sexual excesses, by prostration, mental over-exertion, fright and anxiety.

• 1889, Andrew Lang, Lost Leaders, page 159:

  But the Medical Times, which no doubt ought to know, refers purely to cases of vague melancholy and hypochondriac foreboding. Apparently “The Spleen,” the “English Disease,” is as bad now as when Green wrote in verse and Dr. Cheyne in prose.

• 1956, Margaret 'Espinasse, Robert Hooke, Univ of California Press, page 126

  They included hydrophobia, hypochondria (they were all rather knowledgeable about that, the English disease), metallurgy, shipbuilding, universal language [...]

• 1984, New Society - Volumes 69-70, page 462:

  Hypochondria: they called it the English disease. For the first thing that struck visitors to these shores a couple of centuries back (once they'd got over the poisonous coffee) was the morbid depression hanging over the natives like a fog.

• 1987, Encounter - Volume 69, page 52:

  "One of the symptoms of 'the English disease'", as Stuart Maclure stresses, "is an excessive hypochondria."

Masochism, especially a fondness for flagellation

• 1979, Norman Gelb, The irresistible impulse: an evocative study of erotic notions and practices through the ages, Grosset & Dunlap

  Flagellation was known as "the English disease" because of the frequency with which it was encountered in Britain.

• 1980, The Spectator

  It was hard to understand why the whole venture had been transferred to the screen, but then, of course, the English disease has always been masochism.

• 1990, Dick Francis, Enquiry, Penguin UK →ISBN

  The English disease. Shades of Fanny Hill. Sex tangled up with self-inflicted pain, like nuns with their little disciplines and sober citizens paying a pound a lash to be whipped.

• 2008, R. W. Holder, Dictionary of Euphemisms, Oxford University Press →ISBN, page 64

  For the British the English vice, flagellation, differs from what Americans may describe as English arts, discipline, guidance, or treatment and few Englishmen admit to suffering from the English disease.

Poor industrial relations, and the resulting economic weakness

• 1903, Walter Hines Page, Arthur Wilson Page, The World's Work: A History of Our Time

  The unions, I believe, are a very small part of the English disease. Mr. Mosely says that an English workman who offers a suggestion toward improving methods of work is likely to be "sacked."

• 1974, New Scientist, page 27

  And in a country where the "English disease" is almost unheard of, this "silent strike" of workers has gained in popularity

• 1993, Andrew Bard Schmookler, The Illusion of Choice: How the Market Economy Shapes Our Destiny, SUNY Press →ISBN, page 246

  In the decade of the 1980s, Great Britain managed, under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher, to recover somewhat from the "English disease."

• 2000, Klaus Larres, Elizabeth Meehan, Uneasy Allies : British-German Relations and European Integration Since 1945: British-German Relations and European Integration Since 1945, OUP Oxford →ISBN, page 207

  Talk of the 'English disease' — of lower productivity, low investment, low growth and lousy industrial relations — has given way to an obsessive concern with Germany's perceived problem as a 'location' for economic activity ( Standortdebatte).

• 2015, Wayne C. Thompson, Western Europe 2015-2016, Rowman & Littlefield →ISBN, page 66

  She rooted out one of the main causes of the “English disease” by taking on the bosses of the most powerful unions and crushing them: the steel workers in 1980, the coal miners in 1985 and the teachers in 1986.

• 2004, Martin J. Wiener, English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit, 1850-1980, →ISBN, page 3:

  As successive governments, Labour and Tory, saw their varying panaceas for lifting the economy to the level of growth of Britain's neighbors and competitors yield only frustrating failure (despite even the unforeseen windfalls of North Sea gas and oil), the realization began to sink in that the problem had a long history. "The English disease," Correlli Barnett argued in 1975, "is not the novelty of the past 10 or even 20 years . . . but a phenomenon dating back more than a century." The intractability of the problem made it ever clearer that it was rooted deep in the nation's social structure and mental climate.

Rickets

• 1907, Ferdinand Herb, The Care-feeding of the Baby, page 223:

  The English Disease, also called Rickets or Rachitis, is a systemic disease, that is, it is a disease which may attack any and all organs of the body, although it affects some of them in a peculiar degree, ...

• 2005, Jennie Hawthorne, East End Memories, The History Press →ISBN

  All the eight children of this family suffered from the 'English' disease, rickets caused by lack of calcium and vitamins.

• 2012, E. Robert Paul, The Life and Works of J. C. Kapteyn: An Annotated Translation with Preface and Introduction by E. Robert Paul, Springer Science & Business Media →ISBN, page 1

  Born in 1812 in a place called Bodegraven, where his father had been head of the municipal school, grandfather suffered from the "English disease", which was noticeable by the large size of his skull.

• 2013, ChaeRan Y. Freeze, Jay M. Harris, Everyday Jewish Life in Imperial Russia: Select Documents, 1772-1914, Brandeis University Press →ISBN, page 283

  Dampness in a room often causes rheumatism, the English disease, and scrofula.

Sweating sickness

• 1801, Christian August Struve, Asthenology: or, The art of preserving feeble life, page 59:

  We find also that this unequal distribution or action of the vital principle, in the individual sstems, is connected with injury to the other systems of the body; as for example, immoderate excitability of the organs of the skin, when a great part of the secreted juices is carried off by perspiration, as, in the English disease, called the the sweating sickness.

• 1839, Patrick Fraser Tytler, England Under the Reigns of Edward VI. and Mary, page 403:

  In the mean time, when England had fortunately composed all differences with France on the one hand, and Scotland, her near and troublesome neighbour, on the other, the country was afflicted by a grievous scourge in the shape of a distemper, called the English disease, or sweating sickness, which carried off multitudes of people.

• 1844, B.G. Babington, transl., The Epidemics of the middle ages, page 294:

  To make this out accurately would be so much the more difficult, because, in the original year of the Sweating Sickness, foreigners were the very persons among whom the English disease first broke out; and again, because English persons who had lived a year in France, on their return home in the summer of 1551, became the subjects of Sweating Sickness.

• 1888, The Encyclopaedia Britannica, page 735:

  On the other hand, the attack lasts longer than tho sweating-sickness did, is always accompanied by an eruption of vesicles, and is not usually fatal. It is therefore evidently not the some as the English disease, though allied to it.

• 1956, Journal of the South African Veterinary Medical Association

  The true nature of sweating sickness and of its connection, if any, with the Picardy Sweat will probably remain unknown. In view of the justifiable terror aroused by the English disease at least, it is, without question, best that man should be spared another visitation even if science suffers.

Syphilis

• 1819, François Xavier Swediaur, A comprehensive treatise upon the symptoms, consequences, nature, and treatment of venereal, or syphilitic, diseases. Transl, page 69

  It seems that the various names, Persian fire, Naples disease, French disease, and the English disease of St. Paul's bay in Canada, ought all to be reduced to the same meaning.

• 2007, Susanne Dunlap, Emilie's Voice: A Novel, Simon and Schuster →ISBN, page 79

  Her quick thinking and luck made it unnecessary for her to join a “stable” or to stay in a whorehouse surrounded by other prostitutes, most of whom died before reaching their fortieth birthdays, either from the English disease, at the hands of inept abortionists, or at the hands of men who thought that women who forfeited their virtue also forfeited their right to live.

• 2010, Anne Stuart, Ruthless, MIRA →ISBN, page 285

  Though in fact the English disease, as well as other, lesser misfortunes, were easy enough to avoid if one was careful in one's choices. [...] And there were contraptions to avoid illness, envelopes made of sheep guts or linen soaked in chemicals.

• 2015, Jacqueline Briskin, The French Passion, Open Road Media →ISBN

  “What else can a girl do, ma'am? And there's my brother. I ... I ain't pretty, but some men, they likes young girls. They thinks there's less chance of catching the English disease.”

Tuberculosis

• 1837, Charlotte Campbell Bury, Anna Maria Hall, The Divorced: Tales of Woman's Trials, page 80

  ... they feared she was going into a consumption, and some ladies professed themselves unwilling that she should be too much with their daughters, for they said, “that English disease is so catching, half the young English girls are poitrinaire.

• 1852, Thomas Henry Burgess, Climate of Italy in relation to pulmonary consumption, page 55

  M. Carriere cannot understand why the English prefer Nice to other parts of the continent of a milder and more favoured climate, "unless it be from the circumstance of the English disease being generally of a scrofulous nature."

• 1868, the medical press and circular, page 75

  The people were so afraid of catching the English disease. Along the Riviera the same belief is prevalent. Some of the people will assure you positively that consumption was unknown until the English brought it