SG Heritage Dictionary

Whitlow [Noun] Webster's Dictionary 1828

1. In surgery, paronychia, a swelling or inflammation about the nails or ends of the fingers, or affecting one or more of the phalanges of the fingers, generally terminating in an abscess. There are four or five varieties of this swelling. 1. The cutaneous paronychia, which raises the cuticle, forming a kind of vesicle filled with a limpid serum, or bloody fluid. 2. The subcutaneous paronychia, a tumor attended with acute pain. It is seated in the cellular membrane under the skin. 3. The subungual paronychia, which occurs under the nail. It commences with inflammatory symptoms, but is less painful than the former. 4. There is also the paronychia of the periosteum, and the paronychia of the tendons or theca.

2. In sheep, the whitlow is a disease of the feet, of an inflammatory kind. It occurs round the hoof, where an acrid matter is collected, which ought to be discharged.

Whitlow [Adjective] Webster's Dictionary 1913

1. An inflammation of the fingers or toes, generally of the last phalanx, terminating usually in suppuration. The inflammation may occupy any seat between the skin and the bone, but is usually applied to a felon or inflammation of the periosteal structures of the bone.

2. An inflammatory disease of the feet. It occurs round the hoof, where an acrid matter is collected.

Whitlow Encyclopedia Britannica

WHITLOW is a name applied loosely to any inflammation involving the pulp of the finger, attended by swelling and throbbing pain. In the simplest form, apt to occur in sickly children, the inflammation results in a whitish vesicle of the skin, containing watery or bloody fluid. In all such cases, where the deeper structures are not implicated, no radical local treatment is needed, although the illness is an indication for constitutional treatment. The affection is not usually spoken of as whitlow unless it involves the deeper structures of the last joint of the finger. These are in a peculiarly close relation to the surface; hence the liability to deep-seated formations of matter, from some slight scratch or prick (poisoned or otherwise) of the skin over the pulp of the finger, or even when there is no obvious external provocation. The intimate connexion of the surface with the deep structures is near the finger-tip; in that region there are certain regular bundles of strong fibres passing from the under layers of the skin, through the fat of the finger pulp, down to the free end of the bone, which is roughened and expanded in a very peculiar manner for their insertion. These fibres, which are proper to adults, serve to convey an inflammatory infection from the skin down to the bone, or to the periosteum or covering of the bone, and to the tendon (of the deep flexor muscle of the finger) inserted into that part of the last joint of the finger next to the hand. The peculiar danger of a whitlow is that, if it be not opened in time by a deep cut down to the bone along the middle line of the phalanx, the inflammation will attack the covering of the bone, and so produce mortification or necrosis of the latter, and then attack the insertion of the tendon, causing sloughing of ...

9th ed. Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. 24, p. 554
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Whitlow-grass [Noun] Webster's Dictionary 1828

1. Mountain knotgrass, a species of Illecebrium.

2. A name given to certain species of Draba.

3. The rue-leaved whitlow-grass is a species of Saxifraga.

Whitlow-wort [Noun] Webster's Dictionary 1913

Same as Whitlow grass, under Whitlow.