Botch

Botch

( שְׁחַין , Shechiz', elsewhere "boil"), a name applied ( Deuteronomy 28:27;  Deuteronomy 28:35) to the Egyptian plague of cutaneous inflammatory eruptions ( Exodus 9:9 sq.), a disease at that time preternaturally induced, but apparently also endemic in that country from Sept. to Dec., according to some travellers, and breaking out in pustules that sometimes prove fatal in a few days (Granger, Voyage de l'Egypte, p. 22). Others (comp. Rosenmuler, Alterthumsk. ii, 222 sq.) understand a kind of eruptive fever engendered by the effluvia after the inundation of the Nile; but this disease would hardly attack cattle. Jahn (Archaol. I, ii, 384) thinks it was the black leprosy or melandria. (See Boil).