HONEY, a sweet vegetable juice, collected by the bees from the flowers of various plants, and deposited in the cells of the comb; from which it is extracted either by spontaneous percolation through a sieve in a warm place, the comb being separated and laid thereon, or by expression. That which runs spontaneously is purer than that which is expressed, a quantity of the wax and other matters being forced out along with it by the pressure. The best sort of honey is of a thick consistency, a whitish colour inclining to yellow, an agreeable smell, and pleasant taste: both the colour and flavour are said to differ in some degree, according to the plants which the bees collect it from. It is supposed that honey is merely the juice of the flower perspiring, and becoming inspissated thereon, and that the bee takes it up with its proboscis, and carries it to be deposited in its waxen cells, with which the young bees are to be fed in summer, and the old ones in winter; but it is certain, that honey can be procured by no other method of collecting this juice than by the bees. The honey wrought by the young bees, and that which is permitted to run from the comb without heat or pressure, is white and pure, and called virgin honey. The honey of old bees, and that which is forced from the comb by heat or pressure, is yellow, from the wax. Honey produced where the air is clear and hot, is better than that where the air is variable and cold.—The honey of Narbonne in France, where rosemary abounds, is said to have a very manifest flavour of that plant, and to be imitable
by adding to other honey an infusion of rosemary flowers.
Honey, considered as a medicine, is a very useful detergent and aperient, powerfully dissolving viscid juices, and promoting the expectoration of tough phlegm. In some particular constitutions it has an inconvenience of griping, or of proving purgative, which is said to be in some measure prevented by previously boiling the honey. This, however, with all constitutions, is by no means effectual; and the circumstance mentioned has had so much weight with the Edinburgh college, that they do not now employ it in any preparation, and have entirely rejected the mella medicata, substituting syrups in their place: but there can be no doubt that honey is very useful in giving form to different articles, although there be some individuals with whom it may disagree. In order, however, to obtain the good effects of the honey itself, it must be used to a considerable extent, and as an article of diet. The following remarkable instances of the good effects of honey in some asthmatic cases, given by Mr Monro in his Medical and Pharmaceutical Chemistry, deserve to be here inserted. "The late Dr John Hume, one of the commissioners of the sick and hurt of the royal navy, was for many years violently afflicted with the asthma. Having taken many medicines without receiving relief, he at last resolved to try the effects of honey, having long had a great opinion of its virtues as a pectoral. For two or three years he ate some ounces of it daily, and got entirely free of his asthma, and likewise of a gravelly complaint with which he had long been afflicted. About two years after he had recovered his health, when he was fitting one day in the office for the sick and hurt, a person labouring under a great difficulty of breathing, who looked as if he could not live many days, came to him, and asked him by what means he had been cured of his asthma? Dr Hume told him the particulars of his own case, and mentioned to him the means by which he had found relief. For two years after he heard nothing of this person, who was a stranger to him, and had seemed so bad that he did not imagine he could have lived many days, and therefore had not even asked him who he was; but at the end of that period, a man seemingly in good health, and decently dressed, came to the sick and hurt office, and returned him thanks for his cure, which he assured him had been entirely brought about by the free use of honey."