A tropical fever that causes sailors to become delirious and sometimes jump overboard, believing the sea is a green field they can walk on.
From Spanish calentura (fever), derived from caliente (hot), from Latin calens (burning). The term emerged in the 16th-17th centuries among sailors in tropical waters and became a specific maritime medical term.
Calenture is one of history's most poetic medical conditions—sailors would literally hallucinate the ocean as land because of high fever and longing for home. It's almost like the disease itself was homesickness made physical.
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