An essay on the virtues of lime-water in the cure of the stone / By Robert Whytt. With an appendix, containing the case of the Honourable Horatio Walpole, esquire, written by himself.

  • Robert Whytt
Date:
M,DCC,LII [1752]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An essay on the virtues of lime-water in the cure of the stone / By Robert Whytt. With an appendix, containing the case of the Honourable Horatio Walpole, esquire, written by himself. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of it can in this Form be mixed with our Fluids {e), and of the Powder (already half flaked, and confequently greatly weakened by being expofed fixty Days to the open Air) only a few Scruples are exhibited a Day. If this Powder is {wallowed without enough of Liquids along with it, it may. be of bad Confequence,. and, I am afraid, has been the Occafion of great Meat and Uneafinefs in many People’s Sto- machs 3. ' (¢) In England they make Soap with a Lye of Potafh. and Quick-lime, boiled up with Fat and Oil to a proper Confiftence; and it is upon the Suppofition of Alicant Soap being alfo made in this Manner that Dr. Hales’s Experi- ments moftly proceed ; for having found a Lye of Potafh and Quick-lime which is of a Nature moft intolerably fiery and corrofive, to diflolve the Stone more quickly than any thing except Spirit of Nitre, it was reafonable to expect that Soap, of which this conftitutes fo confiderable a Part, fhould be pofleffed of a diffolving Virtue likewife. But I have been informed that at Alicant in Valencia, where the beft Soap is made, there is no Quick-lime ufed in its Compofi- tion, but inftead of it only Lime-water, which, together with alkaline Salt got from the Afhes of the Herb Kali, and ‘with Oil of Olives, is boiled in large Caldrons that hold fe- veral Tons, till it acquires a proper Thickne&, when they pour it out on a Floor, and, before it hardens, cut it inte Bricks. See alfo Lemery’s Diftionaire de drogues, p. 485. ‘Savon eft une compofition fait avec Uhuile dolives la plus grof~ frere, de Pamidon, de Veau de chaux, & de la leffive tirte de cendres du kali. L’amidon, the Starch, he tells afterwards, is only fometimes added in order to make the Soap whiter and turn fooner thick, .
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