Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Purgative   Listen
Purgative

adjective
1.
Strongly laxative.  Synonyms: cathartic, evacuant.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Purgative" Quotes from Famous Books



... multiplication of sects and in its growth of legend and superstition, Buddhism has but followed every known religion, including traditional Christianity itself. Yet popular Buddhism has reached a point which shows, that, instead of having a self-purgative and self-reforming power, it is apparently still treading in the steps ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... quality and quantity, according to the time which has elapsed from delivery, being peculiarly and wonderfully adapted at every period to the wants of the individual for whose use it is destined. Thus, that first secreted, called colostrum, possesses a purgative quality evidently intended by the all-wise Author of our being for the purpose of removing the meconium[A],—a process which experience has sufficiently proved to be necessary for the welfare of the newly-born infant. Afterwards, ceasing to possess this ...
— Remarks on the Subject of Lactation • Edward Morton

... men, even amongst the wisest and strongest of us, who benefit every year of their lives by what might be called the purgative function of literature,—men who, if they did not have a chance at the right moment to commit certain sins with their imaginary selves, would commit them with their real ones. Many a man of the larger and more comprehensive type, hungering for the heart of all experience, bound to have ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee

... be cultivated in these parts. I cannot tell whether its purgative secretion is still in favour. The confusion between this stuff and the biblical manna gave rise to the legends about Calabria where "manna droppeth as dew from Heaven." Sandys says it was prepared out of the mulberry. He copied assiduously, did old Sandys, ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... divested of those subtilties, and expressed in plain language, it will be found that nothing in what our author, with other spiritualists, calls mystical theology, contradicts common sense. With them he divides the progress of a Christian, in his advances towards perfection, into three stages, the purgative, the contemplative, and the unitive. In the first stage he places sinners on their first entrance, after their conversion into a spiritual life; who bewail their sins, are careful to avoid relapsing into them, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... uncleanliness, is known, too much cannot be said in condemnation of the wide-spread abuse of "liver and atony persuaders" and the use of irritating suppositories and dilating bougies, candles, etc. The numerous and various drastic purgative nostrums—which literally fill our medical literature—and the universal demand for them, are evidence of this very common disease, which disease is rendered worse by the drugs taken for the relief of a foul intestinal alveus. ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison

... evil influences; for to the primitive mind fire is the most powerful of all purificatory agents"; and again, id. iii. 314: "It is quite possible that in these customs the idea of the quickening power of fire may be combined with the conception of it as a purgative agent for the expulsion or destruction of evil beings, such as witches and the vermin that destroy the fruits of the earth. Certainly the fires are often interpreted in the latter way by the persons who light them; and this purgative use of the element comes out very prominently, as ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... confused with spiritual regeneration. Bishop Gregory of Tours once addressed the following apostrophe to the worshipful St. Martin: "O unspeakable theriac! ineffable pigment! admirable antidote! celestial purgative! superior to all the skill of physicians, more fragrant than aromatic drugs, stronger than {223} all ointments combined! thou cleanest the bowels as well as scammony, and the lungs as well as hyssop; thou cleanest the head as well ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry

... from the stomach into the small intestines, rendering their contents more liquid; then passes into the colon, producing the same effect upon its more solid contents, thus causing an evacuation. Many people have no conception, whatever, of the modus operandi of a purgative drug, simply believing that it acts in a certain mysterious manner, but the above described process is generally believed to be the correct one by those who have thought upon the matter, but lack physiological knowledge. It ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell

... name is comprehensive of several kinds of trees whose fruits are used in compounding astringent and slightly purgative medicines.] ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt

... found it sweet when it was brought back by a servant, supposing it to be a fresh supply. A laxative medicine may produce sleep, in the belief that it is an opiate; and contrariwise, an anodyne may act as a purgative, if the patient believes that it was so intended.[66:1] Dr. Robert T. Edes, in "Mind Cures from the Standpoint of the General Practitioner," remarks that mental action, whether intellectual or emotional, has little or no effect upon certain physiological ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence

... in the dog is simple, yet often misunderstood. It is connected with distemper in its early stage. It is the produce of inflammation of the mucous passages generally, which an emetic and a purgative will probably, by their direct medicinal effect, relieve, and free the digestive passages from some source of irritation, and by their mechanical action unburthen ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... also, another well-known rule, and that is, that no purgative medicine should be taken immediately before or during the change. If called for by some other disorder, a mild laxative is all that should be administered, unless by ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys

... to bear in mind that temporary causes, such as especially the disorders produced by over-fatigue, or by an over-hearty or indigestible meal, may suddenly raise the temperature as high as 102 deg., or higher, but the needed repose or the action of a purgative may be followed in a few hours by an almost equally sudden decline of the ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.

... finger. This was going to the other extreme. There are certain cases in which purgatives are alleged to be of use, viz.: Those in which the bowels are constipated, and there is a bitter taste in the mouth. I have never seen such cases except in habitual drunkards, and in such cases a purgative does more harm than allowing the effete matter to remain in the system. Opium was once vaunted as a specific, and it was claimed that it diminished the tendency to complications in the course of the disease. Dr. Corrigan, of Dublin, said that large doses of opium were ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various

... standard of morality for the divine and for the human, Plotinus gradually arrives at the conclusion, that virtue is not the end, but the means; not the Divine nature itself, as the Christian schools held, but only the purgative process by which man was to ascend into heaven, and which was necessary to arrive at that nature—that ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley

... I think this work will help to increase devotion to the Suffering Souls, and excite a more tender and more sensible feeling of sympathy for them, at least amongst Catholics, showing, as it does, the awful reality of those purgative pains awaiting all, with few or no exceptions, in the after life; the help they may and do receive from the good offices of the living, and the sacred and solemn' duty it is for Christians in the present life to remember them and endeavor ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier

... LITTLE,—When the blood is in an impure state, brimstone and treacle is applied as a mild purgative; our taking the bands was the mild remedy; but, should the seat of disease not be reached, we shall take away the treacle, and add to the brimstone a necessary quantity of ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... carraway seeds. Or boil a pound of the fine raspings of guaiacum, with six gallons of sweetwort, till reduced to five; and when it is set to work, put in the above ingredients. If a little salt of wormwood be taken with it, this diet drink will act as a diuretic, as well as a purgative. ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... glasses to the breasts and also over the liver, and to correct the flexibility of the matter, purgative means, moderated by astringents, ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous

... commanded by M. le Duc and Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans. Madame la Duchesse de Berry continued to be more and more relieved and so restored, that Chirac, her regular doctor, began to fear for his reputation, and taking the opportunity when Garus was asleep upon a sofa, presented, with impetuosity, a purgative to Madame la Duchesse de Berry, and made her swallow it without saying a word to anybody, the two nurses standing by, the only persons present, not daring to ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... three parts, each averaging in Anthony's case about five days. First came the Purgative Exercises: the object of these was to cleanse and search out the very recesses of the soul; as fire separates ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... desire of Heaven What it is to die in God Upon length of life Upon Purgatory Upon Penance Upon penitent confusion Upon interior peace amidst anxieties Upon discouragement Upon rising after a fall Upon kindliness towards ourselves Upon imperfections The just man falls seven times in the day Upon the purgative way Upon venial sin Upon complicity in the sins of another Upon equivocating Upon solitude Upon vanity Upon the knowledge which puffs up Upon scruples Upon temptations Upon the same subject Thoughts on the Incarnation Upon Confession and Communion Upon Confession Upon a change of confessor ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus

... torment of insects, as Father Gumilla alleges, why has not the custom of painting the skin become general on these shores? (* The pulp of the anato, and even the chica, are astringent and slightly purgative.) Why do so many naked natives paint only the face, though living in the neighbourhood of those who paint the whole body?* (* The Caribs, the Salives, the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt

... for this disease. Dr. Wall gave it a tryal, as well externally as internally, but their experiments did not lead them to observe any other properties in it, than those of a highly nauseating medicine and drastic purgative. ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering

... medicinal purposes.—A number of the fungi were formerly employed in medicine for various purposes, but most of them have been discarded. Some of the plants were once used as a purgative, as in the case of the officinal polyporus, the great puff ball, etc. The internal portion of the great puff ball has been used as an anodyne, and "formidable surgical operations have been performed under its influence." It is frequently ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson



Words linked to "Purgative" :   medicine, medication, cathartic, Seidlitz powder, aloes, Rochelle powder, Seidlitz powders, milk of magnesia, laxative, Epsom salts, medicament, bitter aloes, medicinal drug, purge, castor oil



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com