Chiefly Med. and Path. [ad. F. spécificité, or f. SPECIFIC a. + -ITY.]
1. The quality or fact of being specific in operation or effect.
1876. Bartholow, Mat. Medica (1879), 417. It is not an action of specificity—like quinia in intermittent and remittent fevers.
1884. Trans. Victoria Inst., 37, note. The specificity of germs is still an unsettled question.
1896. Allbutt’s Syst. Med., I. 888. He denies, from experiments of his own, the specificity of protective serum.
2. The fact of being specific in character.
1879. Brit. Med. Jrnl., 24 May, 785. No one who has studied the clinical history of diphtheria can avoid grave doubts as to its specificity.
1894. Lancet, 3 Nov., 1058. The doctrine of the invariable specificity of the disease.
1897. Allbutt’s Syst. Med., III. 633. In determining the specificity of the rheumatic origin.
