pharmacy, is defined to be an external application, of a harder consistence than our ointments; these are to be spread according to the different circumstances of the wound, place, or patient, either upon linen or leather.

Plaster, among builders, &c. The plaster of Paris is a preparation of several species of gypsums, dug near Mont Maitre, a village in the neighbourhood of Paris; whence the name.

The best sort is hard, white, shining, and marbly; known by the names of plaster-stone, or parget of Mount Maitre. It will neither give fire with steel, nor ferment with aqua fortis; but very freely and readily calcines in the fire, into a very fine plaster; the use of which in building, and casting statues, is well known.

Plastic, denotes a thing endued with a formative power, or a faculty of forming or fashioning a mass of matter, after the likeness of a living being; such a virtue as some of the ancient Epicureans, and perhaps the Peripatetics too, imagined to reside in the earth, or at least to have ancients resided therein, by means whereof, and without any extraordinary intervention of a creator, it put forth plants, &c. Some of them seem to be of opinion, that animals, and even man himself, was the effect of this plastic power.

Plastic art, a branch of sculpture, being the art of forming figures of men, birds, beasts, fishes, &c., in plaster, clay, flue, or the like.