Lexicon medicum, or, Medical dictionary : containing an explanation of the terms in anatomy, botany, chemistry, materia medica, midwifery, mineralogy, pharmacy, physiology, practice of physic, surgery, and the various branches of natural philosophy connected with medicine : selected, arranged, and compiled from the best authors / by Robert Hooper.

Robert Hooper

Date:: 1856

Credit: Lexicon medicum, or, Medical dictionary : containing an explanation of the terms in anatomy, botany, chemistry, materia medica, midwifery, mineralogy, pharmacy, physiology, practice of physic, surgery, and the various branches of natural philosophy connected with medicine : selected, arranged, and compiled from the best authors / by Robert Hooper. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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■steals and lymphatics. See Lacteal and Lym- phatic. 2 Those medicines are so termed, which have no acrimony in themselves, and destroy acidities in the stomich and bowels; such are magnesia, prepared chalk, oyster-shells, crabs' claws, &c. 3. Substances are also so called by chemists, which have the faculty of withdrawing moisture from the atmosphere. Absorbing vessels. See Absorbent. ABSORPTION. (Absorptio; from absorbeo, to suck up.) 1. A function in an animated body, ar- ranged by physiologists under the head of natural ac- tions. It signifies the taking up of substances applied 'o the mouths hi absorbing vessels; thus the nutritious part of the food is absorbed from the intestinal canal by the lacieals; thus mercury is taken into the system by the lymphatics of the skin, &c. The principle by which this function takes place, is a power inherent in the mouths of the absorbents, a vis insita, dependent nn the degree of irritability of their internal membrane by which they contract and propel their contents for- wards. 2. By this term chemists understand the conversion o( a gaseous fluid into a liquid or solid, on being united with some othersubstance. ltdiffers from condensation in this being the effect of mechanical pressure. [Absorption by plants.—In 1604, Dr. Foote sent to Dr. Mitchill of New-York, a peach, with the following account of it:— I present you with a peach by the bearer. You will readily perceive that I could not be induced to this from any thing very promising in its aspect, the richness of its flavour, or the singularity of its species. On tasting, you will find it highly charged with muriate of soda : and when I inform you that it has undergone no artificial management, but possessed this property when plucked from the tree, you may mid some difficulty in explaining the fact. This peach was presented lo me by Mr. Solomon Brewer, of Westchester Co., New-York, my former residence. Mr. B. is a respectable man, and the pre- sent clerk of the town in which he lives. The history he gives me of this natural salt-pcack is, that it grew in his neighbourhood, on a tree, around the body and roots of which had been accidentally poured a quail tity of pork or beef-brine ; that its fruit ripens in the month of September ; that the effect of the brine had been, to produce a sickness and decay in the tree ; and that at this time (Sept. 1804) it presents the singular fact of a tree hanging tolerably full of salt peaches. He was unable to inform me of the precise time of the occurrence, but that it was the fore-part of summer, and after the fruit had obtained its shape and some size. This fact, as respects the vegetable kingdom, is in my mind an isolated one. I have felt the more interest in noticing this fact, as it contributes much to strengthen and confirm the opinion you long since advanced, that certain vegeta- bles, as wheat, partake much of the properties of the manure which is used as their aliment, and thence urge with much propriety the importance of the sub- ject to agriculturists.—See Med. Hepos. of Ji'aa■ York, vol. viii. p. 309. A.] ABSTEMIOUS. (Abstcmius; from abs, from, and temctuin, wine.) Refraini.ig absolutely from all use of wine ; but the term is applied to a temperate mode of living, with respect to food generally. Adstk'ntio. Cielius Aurelianus uses this word to express a suppression, or retention: thus, abstentio stcrcorum, a retention of the excrements, which he mentions as a symptom very frequent in a satyriasis. In a sense somewhat different, he uses the word ab- stmta, applying it to the pleura, where he seems to mean thai the humour of the inflamed pleura is prevented, by the adjacent bones, from extending Itself. ABSTERGENT. (Abstergcns; from abstcrgo, to •eanse awuy.) Any application thai cleanses or clears »way foulness. The term is seldom employed by modern writers. ABSTRACTION. (From abstra/io, to draw away.) A term employed by chemists in the process of humid distillation, to signify that the fluid body is again drawn off from the solid, which it had dissolved. A'bsus. The P.gyulian lotus. Abvauiu'tio. (Prom abvacuo, to empty.) Amor- bid discharge ; a large evacuation of any fluid, as of 19 ACA blood from a plethoric person. A term used by some old writers. ACA'CIA. (Acacia, a. f. aicaKia; from aKa^u). to sharpen.) The name of a genus of plants in the l.in- na;an system. Class, folygamia; Order, Monacia. The Egyptian thorn. Acacia catbchu. This plant affords a,drug, form- erly supposed to be an earthy substance brought from Japan, and therefore called terra Japonica, or Japan earth; afterwards it appeared to be an extract prepared in India, it was supposed till lately, from the juice of the Mimosa catechu, by boiling the wood and evapo- rating the decoction by the heat of the sun. Bui the shrub is now ascertained to be an acacia, and is termed Acacia catechu. It grows in great abundance in the kingdom of Bahar, and catechu comes to us principally from Bengal and Bombay. It has received the follow- ing names: Acachou; t'avfel; Ccclchu; Caschu; Ca- techu; Cadtcliu; Cashow; Caitchu; Castjue; Cachu; Cate; Kaath. The natives call it Cult, the English who reside there Cutch. In its purest stale, it is a dry pulverable substance, outwardly of a reddish colour, internally of a shining dark brown, tinged with a red- dish hue; in the mouth it discovers considerable ad- stringency, succeeded by a sweetish mucilaginous taste. It may be advantageously employed for most purposes where an adstringeut is indicated; and is particularly useful in alvine fluxes, where astringents aie required. Besides this, it is employed also in uterine pronuvia, in laxity and debility of the viscera in geneial; and it is an excellent topical adstriugent, when suffered to dis- solve leisurely in the mouth, for laxities ar.d ulcerations of the gums, apththous ulcers in the mouth, and simi- lar affections. This extract is the basis of several formula; in our pharmacopoeias, particularly of a tinc- ture: hut one of the besl tonus under which it can be exhibited, is that of simple infusion in warm water with a proportion of cinnamon, for by this means il is at once freed of its impurities and improved by the addi- tion of the aromatic. Fourcroy says lhat catechu is prepared item the seed? of a kind of palm, called areca. Sir Humphrey Davy has analyzed catechu, and from his examination il u|>- pears, that from Bombay is of uniform texture, led- brown colour, and specific gravity 1.39: thai from Ben- gal is more friable and less consistent, of a chocolate colour externally, but internally chocolate streaked Willi red-brown, and specific gravity 1.28. The catechu from either place differs little in its properties. Its lusle U astringent, leaving behind a sensation of sweetness. Il is almost wholly soluble in water. Two hundred grains of picked catechu from Bombay afforded lOrf grams ol tannin, 60 extractive mailer, 13 mucilage, 10 residuum, chiefly sand and calcareous earth. The same quantity from Bengal; tannin 97 grains, extractive matter 73 mucilage 10, residual matter, being sand, with a sma quantity of calcareous and aluminous earths, 14. Ol the latter, the darkest parts appeared to atlbid most tannin, the lightest most extractive matter. The llin doos prefer the lightest coloured, which has probably most sweetness, to chew with the betel-nut. Of all the astringent substances we know, catechu appears to contain the largest proportion of tannin; and Mr. Purkis found, lhat one pound was equivalent to seven or eight of oak bark for the purpose of tanning leather. [The tinctura Japonica is a powerful and useful astringent in looseness of the bowels. Many persons take this preparation when they are not aware of it, and when there is no occasion. It is used to colour fictitious and imitation brandies made in the United States, anil from the quantity used, these liquors al- ways p. »duce costiveness. A.] Acacia Gkrmanua. German acacia. 1. The name of the German black-thorn or slo^ tree, the Piuuu.s tpijuma ol Linuteua. 2. The name of the inspissated juice of the fruit, as made in Germany ; which, as well as the tree, is there called also Acacia nostras, it is now fallen lutu disuse. Acacia Inmca. See Tumarindus Mica. Acacia nostras. See Acacia Germanira. Acacia vera. 1. The systematic name of the tree which affords gum-arabic, formerly supposed to be a Mimosa. Acacia:—syinia stipularibus pntcntij,us. foliis bipinnatts, partinlibits cttimis gtaiidiitu inter- stinctis, spicis globosis pedunculitis, ol Wilileuow

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