elaterium

British  

/ ˌɛləˈtɪərɪəm /

noun

1. a greenish sediment prepared from the juice of the squirting cucumber, used as a purgative

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Etymology

Origin of elaterium

C16: from Latin, from Greek elatērion squirting cucumber, from elatērios purgative, from elaunein to drive

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

elaterium

He was likewise purged by a bolus of argent. viv. jallap, Digit. elaterium and calomel, which was repeated on the fourth day, to the third time.

From An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases by William Withering

Amid the wayside rubbish grows one of the gourd family, Ecbalium elaterium, commonly called the squirting cucumber, whose fruit—a rough and extremely bitter little cucumber—is the size of a date. 

From The Life of the Spider by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos

The chief vegetable purgatives are aloes, colocynth, gamboge, jalap, scammony, seeds of castor-oil plant, croton-oil, elaterium, the hellebores, and colchicum.

From Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology by W. G. Aitchison (William George Aitchison ) Robertson

Elaterin is extracted from elaterium by chloroform and then precipitated by ether.

From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 9, Slice 2 "Ehud" to "Electroscope" by Various

I asked him how on earth it got there; but I could only learn that the woman was fifty-six inches round the waist, and that he had treated her with elaterium.

From The Stark Munro Letters by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

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