ANTISEPTICS, (from anti and septic putrid, of sepi to putrify), an appellation given to such substances as resist putrefaction.
We have some curious experiments in relation to antiseptic substances by Dr Pringle, who has ascertained their several virtues. Thus in order to settle the antiseptic virtue of salts, he compared it with that of common sea-salt; which being one of the weakest, he supposes equal to unity, and expresses the proportional strength of the rest by higher numbers, as in the following table.
Salts,
| Antiseptics Antispasmodics. |
Salts, their antiseptic virtue. |
|---|---|
| Sea-salt | 1 Saline mixture |
| Sal gemme | 1 + Nitre |
| Tartar vitriolated | 2 Salt of hartshorn |
| Spiritus Mindereri | 2 Salt of wormwood |
| Tartaris solubilis | 2 Borax |
| Sal diureticus | 2 + Salt of amber |
| Crude sal ammoniac | 3 Alum |
um, and sometimes succeeds where opium fails. As antispasmodics, the essential oils differ in this from opium, that they act more on a particular part than on the system in general, and have no soporific effect. Some medicines remove spasms by immediate contact, as asses milk, cream, oil of almonds; others by repelling heat, as gas, sulphur, nitre, sal ammoniac, &c. And where the strictures are produced by inanition and a defect of vital heat, spasms are removed by those medicines that restore the vis vita, such as valerian, castor, musk, &c.