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

The word comes from the Latin carminare, to card or tease wool, and figuratively to attenuate and discuss 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.