Howard-Jones N
Bull World Health Organ. 1974;51(3):317-24.
The term "cholera" appears several times in the Hippocratic writings, and for more than 2 000 years designated ill-defined sporadic gastrointestinal derangements of diverse etiology. When the first pandemic of Asiatic cholera started in 1817, the superficial resemblance of its symptoms to those of "cholera" led to its being given the same name, although there were many objections to this nomenclature and numerous other diagnostic terms were proposed. Some thought that Asiatic cholera was an entirely new disease, while others believed that the old "cholera" had newly become "epidemic". This terminological confusion befogged ideas on the nature and epidemiology of Asiatic cholera for many years, and especially after 1830, when the disease began to spread widely over Europe.
“霍乱”一词在希波克拉底的著作中出现过几次，在两千多年的时间里，它指病因不明的散发性胃肠功能紊乱。1817年，首次出现的亚洲霍乱大流行时，其症状与“霍乱”的症状表面相似，因此被赋予了相同的名称，尽管对此命名存在许多反对意见，并且还提出了许多其他诊断术语。一些人认为亚洲霍乱是一种全新的疾病，而另一些人则认为旧的“霍乱”新近变成了“流行性的”。这种术语上的混乱多年来一直模糊着人们对亚洲霍乱的性质和流行病学的认识，尤其是在1830年之后，当时这种疾病开始在欧洲广泛传播。
