A medical condition where delirious patients make repetitive, pointless picking motions at bedclothes or imaginary objects.
From Greek karphon (straw, chaff) and logia (study of). Medieval physicians named this symptom after observing patients picking at their blankets as if searching for straw or chaff.
Carphology is one of medicine's most poetic terms—it describes something heartbreaking and eerie: delirious patients endlessly picking at invisible threads or lint, a sign their brains were in severe distress from high fever or delirium!
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