Chapter MOORUM to MORT-DE-CHIEN of M by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

seated on a round stool, or mondah, in the thanna,…I entered into conversation with the thannadar.…”—Davidson, Travels in Upper India, i. 127.]

MORCHAL, s. A fan, or a fly-whisk, made of peacock’s feathers. Hind. morch’hal.

1673.—“All the heat of the Day they idle it under some shady Tree, at night they come in troops, armed with a great Pole, a Mirchal or Peacock’s Tail, and a Wallet.”—Fryer, 95.

1690.—(The heat) “makes us Employ our Peons in Fanning of us with Murchals made of Peacock’s Feathers, four or five Foot long, in the time of our Entertainments, and when we take our Repose.”—Ovington, 355.

[1826.—“They (Gosseins) are clothed in a ragged mantle, and carry a long pole, and a mirchal, or peacock’s tail.”—Pandurang Hari, ed. 1873, i. 76.]

MORT-DE-CHIEN, s. A name for cholera, in use, more or less, up to the end of the 18th century, and the former prevalence of which has tended probably to the extraordinary and baseless notion that epidemic cholera never existed in India till the governorship of the Marquis of Hastings. The word in this form is really a corruption of the Portuguese mordexim, shaped by a fanciful French etymology. The Portuguese word again represents the Konkani and Mahratti modachi, modshi, or modwashi, ‘cholera,’ from a Mahr. verb modnen, ‘to break u p, to sink’ (as under infirmities, in fact ‘to collapse’). The Guzarati appears to be morchi or morachi.

[1504.—Writing of this year Correa mentions the prevalence of the disease in the Samorin’s army, but he gives it no name. “Besides other illness there was one almost sudden, which caused such a pain in the belly that a man hardly survived 8 hours of it.”—Correa, i. 489.]

1543.—Correa’s description is so striking that we give it almost at length: “This winter they had in Goa a mortal distemper which the natives call morxy, and attacking persons of every quality, from the smallest infant at the breast to the old man of fourscore, and also domestic animals and fowls, so that it affected every living thing, male and female. And this malady attacked people without any cause that could be assigned, falling upon sick and sound alike, on the fat and the lean; and nothing in the world was a safeguard against it. And this malady attacked the stomach, caused as some experts affirmed by chill; though later it was maintained that no cause whatever could be discovered. The malady was so powerful and so evil that it immediately produced the symptoms of strong poison; e.g., vomiting, constant desire for water, with drying of the stomach; and cramps that contracted the hams and the soles of the feet, with such pains that the patient seemed dead, with the eyes broken and the nails of the fingers and toes black and crumpled. And for this malady our physicians never found any cure; and the patient was carried off in one day, or at the most in a day and night; insomuch that not ten in a hundred recovered, and those who did recover were such as were healed in haste with medicines of little importance known to the natives. So great was the mortality this season that the bells were tolling all day…insomuch that the governor forbade the tolling of the church bells, not to frighten the people…and when a man died in the hospital of this malady of morexy the Governor ordered all the experts to come together and open the body. But they found nothing wrong except that the paunch was shrunk up like a hen’s gizzard, and wrinkled like a piece of scorched leather.…”—Correa, iv. 288–289.

1563.—

“Page.—Don Jeronymo sends to beg that you will go and visit his brother immediately, for though this is not the time of day for visits, delay would be dangerous, and he will be very thankful that you come at once.

“Orta.—What is the matter with the patient, and how long has he been ill?

“Page.—He has got morxi; and he has been ill two hours.

“Orta.—I will follow you.

“Ruano.—Is this the disease that kills so quickly, and that few recover from? Tell me how it is called by our people, and by the natives, and the symptoms of it, and the treatment you use in it.

“Orta.—Our name for the disease is Collerica passio; and the Indians call it morxi; whence again by corruption we call it mordexi.…It is sharper here than in our own part of the world, for usually it kills in four and twenty hours. And I have seen some cases where the patient did not live more than ten hours. The most that it lasts is four days; but as there is no rule without an exception, I once saw a man with great constancy of virtue who lived twenty days continually throwing up (“curginosa”?)…bile, and died at last. Let us go and see this sick man; and as for the symptoms you will yourself see what a thing it is.”—Garcia, ff. 74v, 75.

1578.—“There is another thing which is useless called by them canarin, which the Canarin Brahman physicians usually employ for the collerica passio sickness, which they call morxi; which sickness is so sharp that it kills in fourteen