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Astringent   /əstrˈɪndʒənt/   Listen
Astringent

noun
1.
A drug that causes contraction of body tissues and canals.  Synonyms: astringent drug, styptic.






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"Astringent" Quotes from Famous Books



... William Law,[580] {255} Richard Clarke,[581] and Eugenius Philalethes.[582] Jacob Behmen first announced the three working properties of nature, which Newton stole, as described in the Gentleman's Magazine, July, 1782, p. 329. These laws are illustrated in the whizgig. There is the harsh astringent, attractive compression; the bitter compunction, repulsive expansion; and the stinging anguish, duplex motion. The author hints that he has written other works, to which he gives no clue. I have heard that Behmen was pillaged by Newton, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... an experiment with the small twigs of the chokecherry, which being stripped of their leaves and cut into pieces about two inches long were boiled in pure water, till they produced a strong black decoction of an astringent bitter taste; a pint of this he took at sunset, and repeated the dose an hour afterwards. By ten o'clock he was perfectly relieved from pain, a gentle perspiration ensued, his fever abated and in the morning he was ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark

... quality that gives it merit over other malt liquors—an object that deserves consideration in this great commercial branch of trade, and source of national wealth, where the loss of distinction will be the loss of trade. The rough, astringent, thirst-creating smack is the produce of the brown malt, and a well conducted fermentation. The porter now brewed can no more bear the sudden chill of a cooling atmosphere in the barrel cleansing, without too immediate a condensation ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger

... husk of the grape, they being used during fermentation; on the contrary, the colourless wines are those where the husk of the grape is not used during the process of fermentation. The colouring matter produced from the husks is highly astringent, consequently the red and white wines are very different in their qualities, and very different in their effect ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 366 - Vol. XIII, No. 366., Saturday, April 18, 1829 • Various

... six feet was steeped in the astringent of experience. He played hard and prospered, ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... low, rather, lie low; for you are in the hands of a living God. In the Book of Job, for example, the impotence of man and the omnipotence of God is the exclusive burden of its author's mind. "It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do?—deeper than hell; what canst thou know?" There is an astringent relish about the truth of this conviction which some men can feel, and which for them is as near an approach as can be made to the feeling ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... do well to shut—at least, sometimes— The women up, because, in sad reality, Their chastity in these unhappy climes Is not a thing of that astringent quality Which in the North prevents precocious crimes, And makes our snow less pure than our morality; The sun, which yearly melts the polar ice, Has quite the contrary effect ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... found that our tea leaves, which had been boiled twice and would otherwise have been thrown away, relieved the pain if tied into some cotton and kept pressed against the eyes. The tannic acid in the tea acted as an astringent. A snowblind man can see practically nothing anyhow and so he is not much worse off if a handkerchief is tied over ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... made of wood and of lead, dilators and uterine catheters. Sitz baths were in use, and fumigations were very extensively employed in gynaecological practice. Pessaries were made by rolling lint or wool into an oblong shape, and were medicated to be emollient, astringent or purgative in their local action. The half of a pomegranate was used as a mechanical pessary, and there are also references to tents, and to suppositories for ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott

... surface when hardened, and the undesirable aspect is given of polished spots where repairs have been going on. There is only one way of counteracting this—by mixing other gums or resins that have less or but little glare when hard. Those of a very astringent quality should be avoided, as when dry their pulling power or contraction is very great, and a cracked surface not at all like the rich fused appearance of many of the old masters, but dry and uninteresting, will make itself ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick

... before she perceived some pretty grassy-looking plants, with heads of bright lilac flowers, and on plucking one pulled up the root also. The root was about the size and shape of a large crocus: and on biting it, she found it far from disagreeable—sweet, and slightly astringent. It seemed to be a favourite root with the woodchucks, for she noticed that it grew about their burrows on dry, gravelly soil, and many of the stems were bitten and the roots eaten—a warrant, in full, of wholesomeness. Therefore, carrying home a parcel of the largest of the roots, she ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill

... pliable natures, Lorison was, when thoroughly stirred, apt to become tempestuous. With a high and stubborn indignation upon him, be retraced his steps to the intersecting street by which he had come. Down this he hurried to the corner where he had parted with—an astringent grimace tinctured the thought—his wife. Thence still back he harked, following through an unfamiliar district his stimulated recollections of the way they had come from that preposterous wedding. Many times he went abroad, and nosed his way back to ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry

... change much more if interpreted by the intellect of the grub. What have the lessons of touch and taste contributed to that rudimentary receptacle of impressions? Very little; almost nothing. The animal knows that the best bits possess an astringent flavour; that the sides of a passage not carefully planed are painful to the skin. This is the utmost limit of its acquired wisdom. In comparison, the statue with the sensitive nostrils was a marvel of knowledge, a ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... Catechu Several astringent substances obtained from tropical plants, including Acacia catechu and A. suma; used ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek

... Various species yield gum. True gum-arabic is the product of Acacia Senegal, abundant in both east and west tropical Africa. Acacia arabica is the gum-arabic tree of India, but yields a gum inferior to the true gum-arabic. An astringent medicine, called catechu (q.v.) or cutch, is procured from several species, but more especially from Acacia catechu, by boiling down the wood and evaporating the solution so as to get an extract. The bark of Acacia arabica, under the name of babul or babool, is used in Scinde for tanning. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... for some sharp swish of a branch— there is no scent of resin in this place, no taste of bark, of coarse weeds, aromatic, astringent— only border on border ...
— Sea Garden • Hilda Doolittle

... are excellent for pies and tarts. The persimon is a fruit to which you are a stranger; it may be ranked with the plums, but has four stones, and is not fit to eat till bitten by the frost, when its austere and astringent taste disappears, and it becomes nearly transparent, and as rich and sweet as Guava jelly. The May-apple, or Mandrake, a wild fruit, is a favourite with our young folks; it grows on a single-steemed plant, usually one foot high, and is about the size of a plum, but with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 548 - 26 May 1832 • Various

... in Sorrento, during which Merrihew saw all the beautiful villas, took tea with the Russian princess, made a martyr of himself trying to acquire a taste for the sour astringent wines of the country, and bought inlaid-wood paper-cutters and silk socks and neckties and hat-bands, enough, in truth, to last him for several generations; another week in Capri, where, at the Zum Kater Hidigeigei, he exchanged ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath

... us as soon as it became dusk, but as we did not encourage their advances they left us after a short visit. The native who had killed the talpero, skinned it the moment he arrived in the camp, and, having first moistened them, stuffed the skin with the leaves of a plant of very astringent properties. All these natives were very poor, particularly the men, nor do I think that at this season of the year they can have much animal food of any kind to subsist on. Their principal food appeared to be seeds of various kinds, as of the box-tree, and grass seeds, which they pound into cakes ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt

... (Prunus emarginata, var. mollis) is a small, handsome tree seldom more than a foot in diameter at the base. It makes valuable lumber and its black, astringent fruit furnishes a rich resource as food for the birds. A smaller form is common in the Sierra, the fruit of which is eagerly eaten by the Indians and hunters ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir

... washerwoman's dip. Everyone who is anyone will be here, if not on one night then on another, in a jovial fraternity steeped in the spirit of democracy. Revelry will be sustained on lemonade and a resinous astringent known locally as beer, while a sense of doing the forbidden will be in the air. For commercial reasons it will be needful to keep it in the air, since in the proceedings themselves there will be nothing more occult, or more inciting to ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King

... sensible perspiration produced by several cups of warm tea is a familiar fact to all tea-drinkers. That this effect is wholly owing to the warmth of the mixture, it being drunk usually in hot infusion or decoction, was pointed out long since by Cullen. Tea limits perspiration, perhaps, by the astringent action of the tannin which it contains,—of which more hereafter. What is saved by limiting perspiration? Water, largely; carbonic acid, in considerable amount; ammonia (a nitrogenized substance;) salts of soda, potash and lime, and a trace ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... does not know how the other half lives. Noticing a pot of areca nut toothpaste on a chemist's counter, I asked him what the peculiar properties of the areca nut were—in short, what was it good for. He replied that it was an astringent and acted beneficially on the gums, but he had never heard that it was used for any other purpose than the manufacture of an elegant dentifrice. I felt inclined to question him about the camel in order to see whether he ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... unwholesome for those who are not accustomed to it, and who eat too great a quantity: thus several of our people were attacked with diarrhoea in a few days after we began to make this fish our ordinary sustenance; but they found a remedy in the raspberries of the country which have an astringent property. ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere

... An astringent decoction made from the leaves is used as a gargle in sore throat. The root is emmenagogue and the seeds are used in ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera

... ago Dr. Wiley, the former Government Chemist, published the ingredients of a number of popular remedies for colds, coughs and catarrh. Every one of them contained some powerful opiate or astringent. These poisonous drugs relieve the cough and the catarrhal conditions by paralyzing the eliminative activity of the membranous linings of the nasal passages, the bronchi and lungs, the digestive and genitourinary organs; but in doing so, ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... herb (Polygonum bistorta) with cylindrical spikes of pink flowers and a rhizome used as an astringent ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter



Words linked to "Astringent" :   astringe, nonastringent, medicinal drug, stypsis, medicament, alum, astringence, acerbic, medication, hemostatic, astringency, medicine, sour



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