[Origin uncertain; identity with PIAN has been suggested (N. & Q., Ser. x. I. 5).] A contagious disease affecting negroes, characterized by raspberry-like excrescences or tubercles on the skin; also called frambœsia. Also attrib.
1679. Trapham, Disc. Health Jamaica, ix. 113. Both which quarters of the world [sc. American and African deserts] bring forth the monstrous Yaws as a proper Stock to engraft a new cion of Disease.
1739. Huxham, in Phil. Trans., XLI. 667. He had frequent impure Conversation with some of the Negro Hussies (who probably laboured under the worst Species of Pox, called the Yaws).
1766. Hillary, Air af Barbadoes, 346. Whether it be the Yaws or a sort of itch bed which the Negroes call in their language Crowcrow.
1804. Southey, in C. C. Southey, Life (1849), II. 257. The yellow fever will not take root in a negro, nor the yaws in a white man.
1897. Allbutt’s Syst. Med., II. 502. Paulet, who inoculated healthy negroes with yaws-fluid. Ibid., 506. Syphilis never itches, yaws nearly always does.
1898. P. Manson, Trop. Diseases, xxvii. 430. Yaws virus applied to a preexisting ulcer may … cause it to fungate like an ordinary yaw.
