Choryza: Coryza: Is it the Common Cold?

[rolt968]

A Canadian soldier I am researching spent three to four days in hospital with choryza on 1915.

Is that the same as coryza? If so is that the common cold? If so why three days in hospital?

RM

Edited 24 February , 2022 by rolt968

[Broznitsky]

Are you certain you have transcribed the word accurately?

[JasonMc]

Could be coryza but 3-4 days as you say does seem excessive for a cold. Could it be Cholera?

A pic of the original text might help if you have it to hand.

[rolt968]

18 minutes ago, JasonMc said:

Could be coryza but 3-4 days as you say does seem excessive for a cold. Could it be Cholera?

A pic of the original text might help if you have it to hand.

Here is the original text (courtesy of the Library and Archives of Canada). (I must have thought about posting this some months ago as I had already taken the extract.)

RM

[derekb]

Coryza is another name for the common cold.

[KernelPanic]

To me this looks like two words, not one. But I can't offer any insight as to what they might be. However, 4 days in hospital for what is written as a 'mlld case with recovery', seems inconsistent with the common cold.

[TEW]

The 'common cold' can be caused by a variety of viruses which were unknown organisms at the time. Rhinoviruses and coronaviruses would be the most likely origin for a 'common cold' but as we know - some coronaviruses do very little, others are much worse than Covid-19.

'Common cold' and coryza seem to be very loose terms for an ailment with numerous origins. 

There seem to be some websites that equate a cold to Coryza while others describe Coryza as a symptom of a cold.

TEW

 

[Dai Bach y Sowldiwr]

Yes, it's written there  as 'choryza', but no doubt it equates to 'coryza'.
As TEW says, it can mean the disease, or it can mean just the symptoms.

3 days in hospital does on the face  of it sound excessive to our modern scientific minds, but remember, they were flying blind - no tests, no backup and an ill patient with not much seemingly to find wrong. I'm sure that medical resources weren't used in a profligate manner.

Shame that they didn't have access to retrospectoscopes in those days.

 

[rolt968]

16 hours ago, Dai Bach y Sowldiwr said:

Yes, it's written there  as 'choryza', but no doubt it equates to 'coryza'.
As TEW says, it can mean the disease, or it can mean just the symptoms.

3 days in hospital does on the face  of it sound excessive to our modern scientific minds, but remember, they were flying blind - no tests, no backup and an ill patient with not much seemingly to find wrong. I'm sure that medical resources weren't used in a profligate manner.

Shame that they didn't have access to retrospectoscopes in those days.

 

Thanks Dai.

I don't think that I had realised that the entry was written after the event. It makes a bit more sense: i.e he was in hospital for 3 to 4 days with what turned out to be coryza.

RM