medicines used in colics, or other flatulent disorders, to dispel the wind.

The word comes from the Latin *carminare*, to card or teaze wool, and figuratively to attenuate and diffuse wind or vapours, and promote their discharge by perspiration. Though 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 enchantment: but this interpretation seems a little too far strained.