CARMINATIVES, medicines used in colics, or other flatulent disorders, to dispel the wind.
The word comes from the Latin carminare, to card or tease wool, and figuratively to attenuate and disperse wind or vapours, and promote their discharge by perspiration. Tho' Dr Quincy makes it more mysterious: He says it comes from the word carmen, taking it in the sense of an invocation or charm; and makes it to have been a general name for all medicines which operated like charms, i. e. in an extraordinary manner. Hence, as the most violent pains were frequently those arising from pent-up wind, which immediately cease upon dispersion; the term carminative became in a peculiar sense applied to medicines which gave relief in windy cases, as if they cured by incantment: but this interpretation seems a little too far strained.
The action of carminatives may be somewhat understood by considering that all the parts of the body are respirable. Sanctorius determines all that we call wind to be such respirable matter as makes its escape through the coats of the stomach and intestines; between the several parts of the muscles also may be such respirable matter: now whatever rarefies, and renders collections of these vapours thinner, conduces to their discharge; and as all those things of this denomination in medicine are warm, attenuant, and consist of light subtle parts, it is easy to understand how a mixture of them with the flatus may agitate and rarefy it, especially as they also create such agreeable sensations on the fibres, which help, by invigorating their tone, also to expel it.