Note 440 — THE THIRD VOYAGE NORTH-WARD TO THE KINGDOMES OF CATHAIA and China, in Anno 1596.
Reading edition
Daer deur datter veel gebreck van den scheurbuijck ghecreghen hadden—whereby several had fallen sick of the scurvy.
The derivation of the term “scurvy”—schärbuk, Low German; scharbock, High German; skörbjugg, Swedish; scorbutus, modern Latin,—is variously attempted to be explained. See Adelung, Hochdeutsches Wörterbuch; Mason Good, Study of Medicine, vol. ii, p. 870; Lind, Treatise on the Scurvy, 3rd Edit., p. 283. The last-named writer says:—“Most authors have deduced the term from the Saxon word schorbok, a griping or tearing of the belly [properly scheuren, ‘to scour’, and bauch, ‘belly’]; which is by no means so usual a symptom of this disease; though, from a mistake in the etymology of the name, it has been accounted so by those authors.” It is in this sense that the expression has been understood by the English translator. ↑