sb. and a. [See VALETUDINARY a. and -IAN.]
A. sb. A person in weak health, esp. one who is constantly concerned with his own ailments; an invalid.
1703. Dampier, Voy., III. I. 8. Many of our English Valetudinarians have gone from Jamaica … to the I. Caimanes,… to live wholly upon Turtle that abound there.
1746. R. James, Health’s Improv., Introd. 45. Such who have very strong Constitutions, are more liable to pestilential Disorders, and putrid Fevers, than Valetudinarians.
1787. Gentl. Mag., Dec., 1056/2. Every one knows how hard a task it is to cure a valetudinarian.
1832. J. A. Heraud, Voy. & Mem. Midshipman, vi. (1837), 102. The hot springs and medicinal vapours … must at a very early period have excited the attention of valetudinarians.
1880. L. Stephen, Pope, iv. 92. Naturally, he fell into many of the self-indulgent and troublesome ways of the valetudinarian.
fig. 1712. Budgell, Spect., No. 395, ¶ 10. These are a kind of Valetudinarians in Chastity.
1777. Sheridan, School for Scand., I. i. True, madam! there are Valetudinarians in reputation as well as constitution.
1873. Goulburn, Pers. Relig., II. v. 8. The man becomes a valetudinarian in religion, full of himself, his symptoms, his ailments, the delicacy of his moral health.
B. adj. = VALETUDINARY a.
1713. Derham, Phys.-Theol., III. iv. (1727), 72. An admirable Easement … to the valetudinarian, feeble Part of Mankind.
1740. Cheyne, Ess. Regimen, i. The Scorbutic, Gouty, Consumptive, or Nervous Valetudinarian-low-livers.
1751. Earl Orrery, Rem. Swift (1752), 113. His fortune exempted him from care and sollicitude. His valetudinarian habit of body from intemperance.
1856. R. A. Vaughan, Mystics (1860), II. 118. The valetudinarian devotee becomes more and more the puppet of his spiritual doctor.
1875. Jowett, Plato (ed. 2), III. 283. Asclepius did not instruct his descendants in valetudinarian arts.
Hence Valetudinarianism, the condition of a valetudinarian; tendency to be in weak health or to be much concerned about one’s own health.
1839. Fraser’s Mag., XIX. 52. Those traces of laborious valetudinarianism and nervous sensibility.
1868. W. R. Greg, Lit. & Soc. Judgm., 490. The bolder spirits…, perhaps over-recklessly, despise such egotistic valetudinarianism.
1892. Speaker, 30 July, 141/2. The schoolmistress has had to forget her valetudinarianism and patent medicines in the struggle for existence.
