Balsamic is a Latin word which signifies mitigating. The term balsamic is a very lax one; it includes medicines of very different qualities, as emollients, detergents, restoratives, &c. but in medicine there seems to be this requisite site in them, viz. that they be soft, yielding, and adhesive, also that by their smallness they have a ready disposition to motion. Medicines of this tribe are generally required for complaints whose seat is in the viscera; and as they cannot be conveyed there but by the common road of the circulation, it follows, that no great effects can be expected from them but by their long continuation. Hoffman calls by the name of balsamics those medicines which are hot and acrid, also the natural balsams, gums, &c. by which the vital heat is increased.