The process of melting, liquefying, or dissolving through heat; in pathology, the progressive wasting and discharge of liquid from a diseased body.
From Latin 'colliquatio,' the noun form of 'colliquare.' In medical texts, this term described the dangerous fluid loss associated with severe illness or infection.
Doctors before antibiotics used 'colliquation' to describe tuberculosis and other wasting diseases—the patient would literally seem to melt away, losing strength and body fluids, a symptom medicine couldn't reverse until the 20th century.
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