melanaemia

• melanemia

Medical English, from New Latin, from Ancient Greek roots; by surface analysis, melan(o)- +‎ -aemia, "black blood" or "dark blood".

melanaemia (uncountable)

1. (medicine, obsolete) A morbid state in which the blood contains black pigment, either floating freely or embedded in the white blood cells; either a disease or a sign of one, ambiguously.

The term predates modern molecular biology and is no longer in current medical use; the precise biochemical and molecular nature of the black pigment was often not known in the era when this word was used, and it can vary depending on which disease causes the sign. Hemochromatosis and malaria were known to be the diagnoses in some instances of so-called melanemia even at their time, and others of them may have been methemoglobinemia.

• melanaemic (adjective)

• “melanæmia”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.