English edit

Noun edit

black vomit (uncountable)

  1. (obsolete) A blackish matter, resembling coffee grounds and due to hæmorrhage, vomited in severer cases of yellow fever; also, the disease of yellow fever itself.
    • 1833, chapter 2, in Cyclopædia of practical medicine, page 295:
      A fever, with yellow skin and black vomit in some of the cases, appeared among a party of forty men.
    • 1854 May, Daniel Drake, The Western Journal of Medicine and Surgery[1], page 369:
      Black vomit is nothing but a hœmorrhage from the stomach, and may exist in any degree, from a few particles of blood mixed, as it were, into a quantity of light glairy fluid, presenting the appearance of floating dark specks or flocculi, to that of a rapid and profuse discharge of pure red blood.
    • 1876, John S. Bristowe, A treatise on the theory and practice of medicine, published 1878, page 199:
      On the third or fourth day, or later, the vomited matters..begin to contain blood..and they soon assume..a coffee-ground character, constituting the so-called black vomit.