The Collaborative International Dictionary
Consumption \Con*sump"tion\ (?; 215), n. [L. consumptio: cf. F. consomption.]
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The act or process of consuming by use, waste, etc.; decay; destruction.
Every new advance of the price to the consumer is a new incentive to him to retrench the quality of his consumption.
--Burke. The state or process of being consumed, wasted, or diminished; waste; diminution; loss; decay.
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(Med.) A progressive wasting away of the body; esp., that form of wasting, attendant upon pulmonary phthisis and associated with cough, spitting of blood, hectic fever, etc.; pulmonary phthisis; -- called also pulmonary consumption.
Consumption of the bowels (Med.), inflammation and ulceration of the intestines from tubercular disease.
Syn: Decline; waste; decay. See Decline.
Usage examples of "pulmonary consumption".
The fresh root is bitter, with a milky juice which is somewhat aperient and slightly sedative, suiting subjects troubled with bilious torpor, whilst, on good authority, the plant has been pronounced useful against pulmonary consumption.
In most parts of Ireland, besides growing wild, it is carefully cultivated in gardens, because of a steady demand for the plant by sufferers from pulmonary consumption.
Eryngo promotes a free expectoration and possessing an aromatic principle is very serviceable in debility attendant upon coughs of chronic standing in the advanced stages of pulmonary consumption, in which it has been used in the candied form with great benefit.
In the eastern states of North America (where it is called Indian Chocolate, Cure All and Water Flower) it is much used as a popular remedy in pulmonary consumption, simple dyspepsia and diseases of the bowels consequent on disorders of the stomach, and is valued as a febrifuge and tonic.