Catarrh is now regarded as inflammation of the mucous membranes, especially of the air passages, together with the production of a mucoid exudate. Simple though this definition is, it bears evident traces of the history of the disease.

History

The name derives from Hippocrates’ use of katarrhoos, “a flowing down” of humors from the head. In that use, the term was probably not yet technical, and so akin to such a Latin word as defluxio. In commenting on Hippocrates, however, Galen distinguishes from a general “downflowing” a more precise meaning of “catarrh” – that is, a defluxion from the head to the lungs, producing a hoarseness of voice and coughing.

The Greek word became catarrhus in Latin and a technical term with, increasingly, Galen’s meaning attached to it. Although it is tempting to identify catarrhus and catarrh, we have to remember that for Galen and doctors down to the seventeenth century, catarrhus could not be defined without reference to Galenic pathology. Catarrhus was a process in which the brain, preternaturally affected by cold, produced a qualitatively unbalanced humor in excessive quantity that passed down through the pores in the palate and by way of the trachea to the lungs. This unspoken assumption behind the name is paralleled by that behind the modern definition: We make the assumption that the “inflammation” of the definition is due to infection by an organism. It is the identity of the organism that gives us the ontology of the disease. A similar situation existed in all historical periods; that is to say, definitions of disease have always carried with them some part of a theory of causation.