redwater, noun

Origin:
See quotation 1916.
Pathology
1.
a. In full redwater fever: a form of piroplasmosis, a highly contagious, febrile disease of cattle, caused by the blood parasite Babesia bigemina and transmitted by the blue tick. Also attributive.
b. combination
redwater veld, countryside in which the disease is endemic.
Note:
Different from British English ‘red-water’: see quotation 1896.
1873 Queenstown Free Press 15 JulyThe ‘Red Water.’ This dreadful cattle disease is said to be steadily but surely approaching the Colonial Frontier.
1885 H. Rider Haggard King Solomon’s Mines (1972) 42This lot were thoroughly ‘salted,’ that is, they had worked all over South Africa, and so had become proof..against red water, which so frequently destroys whole teams of oxen when they get on to strange ‘veldt’ (grass country).
1896 R. Wallace in C. Pettman Africanderisms (1913) 396As it is understood in the Cape Colony, red water is not the non-contagious derangement known by the name in Great Britain, but is identical with the highly communicable disease called ‘Texas fever’ in the United States of America.
1897 ‘F. Macnab’ On Veldt & Farm 231Some mystery appears to attach to the disease called red-water. On some farms it seems almost identical with the disease known by that name at home, but in many districts of Cape Colony and the Transvaal it assumes a severer form, and is believed to be the same as Texas fever in America.
1914 Farmer’s Annual 125The symptoms of Redwater are again inconclusive. General disturbance is obvious; the animal is dull and dejected, with staring coat and drooping ears. Appetite and rumination cease.
1916 Farmer’s Weekly 20 Dec. 1494The diagnostic symptom of redwater is passing of redwater — that is, blood-coloured or even coffee-coloured urine. Other symptoms are very like gallsickness.
1923 G.H. Nicholls Bayete! 265Clean and infected cattle — infected with the dreaded redwater disease — rubbed shoulders together; and the result of years of careful dipping and isolation might be destroyed in a day.
1937 Handbk for Farmers (Dept of Agric. & Forestry) 502Cattle that have lived for several generations in redwater areas become less susceptible to the disease than are freshly introduced cattle.
1955 J.B. Shephard Land of Tikoloshe 144Many Africans..do not connect the bont-tick, the red-legged tick, and all the other parasites which dipping helps to destroy, with East Coast fever and Red Water.
1972 Farmer’s Weekly 21 Apr. 60The animals are used to virulent heartwater, redwater and gallsickness veld.
1978 Daily Dispatch 16 Aug. (Suppl.) 16The blue tick is the main transmitting agent for anaplasmosis and redwater and therefore veterinarians are often required to make the difficult distinction between the very similar symptoms of both diseases.
1980 P. Schirmer Concise Illust. S. Afr. Encycl. 18Redwater Fever; an acute cattle disease transmitted by the blue tick.
1991 Farmer’s Weekly 5 Apr. 10The Veterinary Reseach Institute at Onderstepoort has for many years produced an effective and reliable redwater vaccine to protect cattle against the disease.
1993 [see gallsickness veld gallsickness sense 3].
2. obsolescent. Bilharzia, a disease of human beings which is characterized by haematuria.
[1887 J.W. Matthews Incwadi Yami 15The principal diseases of importance being dysentery, low malarial fever (bilio-remittent) and a peculiar form of hæmaturia, due to a parasite named the Distoma hæmatobium, introduced into the system by the drinking of impure water.]
1906 Education Gaz. Vol.6 No.11, 220It appears that a very large proportion of the boys suffer from redwater as the result of bathing in the Buffalo River. No girl bathes there, and no girl suffers from the disease.
1957 S. Poss in Pietersburg Eng. Medium School Mag. Dec. 52Bilharzia first originated in Egypt about 4,000 years ago, although people only started thinking about a cure in 1850, when nearly every child had the disease then known as ‘Red Water’.
In full redwater fever:a form of piroplasmosis, a highly contagious, febrile disease of cattle, caused by the blood parasite Babesia bigemina and transmitted by the blue tick. Also attributive.
countryside in which the disease is endemic.
Bilharzia, a disease of human beings which is characterized by haematuria.
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18731991

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redwater veld

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obsolete or obsolescent
red ticket, noun phrasen. phr.reedbuck, nounn.
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