Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. any unspecified but deleterious disease or ailment; esp. as the minatory phr. dreaded lurgi.

[1826		Vulgarities of Speech Corrected n.p.: The Lombard, or Lurgan, fever, fever Idleness, or laziness].
1947		‘Imaginary Diseases’ in AS XXII:4 Apr. 304/2: lergy (the). This must rank next in position to the Crud as the most often mentioned malaise. It is pronounced with a hard ‘g’ and is a completely mythological disease against which every soldier is warned at one time or another, and with which almost every disease is identified. Variants of this are many and diverse, usually exhibiting geographical characteristics: the Malayan Lergy, the Progressive Indonesian Lergy, etc.
1983		J. Sullivan ‘Thicker than Water’ Only Fools and Horses [TV script] He’s had everything from Galloping Lurgy to Saturday Night Fever!
1983		New Society 10 Mar. 384/3: You are never ill but suffer the ‘dreaded lurgi’.
1996		J. Cameron It Was An Accident 95: I was wondering who got the lurgy and who never, couldn’t tell by looking.
2001		OnLine Dict. of Playground Sl. 🌐 lurgi, lurgy n. imaginary sickness that 1) girls had and you contracted by kissing them. 2) you had as a matter of course from being smelly or dirty or not like the other kid.
2011		K. Schopflin Twitter 24 Feb. 🌐 Dressed, but still a bit lurgy-wobbly. 3 minutes on knowledge management will soon wake me up!
2017		T. Spicer Good Girl Stripped Bare 89: ‘I don’t know what happened. I’ve got a lurgy, so maybe I’m breathing through my mouth instead of my nose’.

2. in fig. sense.

2002

J. Cameron Hell on Hoe Street 155: Alia got the shopping lurgy bad [...] buying presents for back home.