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SALENGORÉ

Volume 19 · 373 words · 1842 Edition

a district in the Malay peninsula, extending along the Straits of Malacca, and governed by a Mahommedan chief, who bears the title of rajah. It is situated at no great distance from Prince of Wales' Island, in which the trade of the place chiefly centres. Pepper, cloves, wild nutmegs, wax, nutmeg-oil, rattans, dammer, wood, oil, &c., are imported in the Burgess praws; and from a large river near to Salengore great quantities of long rattans are brought. The prince is the chief merchant, as in the other Malay principalities, monopolizing all the trade. Ships lying in the river are secure from pirates; but in the road it is necessary to be on the alert against straggling praws, which are always ready to take advantage of unguarded ships. The Burgess have still a small settlement here, and profess the Mahommedan religion.

SALEP, in the Materia Medica, the dried root of a species of orchis. "The restorative, mucilaginous, and demulcent qualities of the orchis root, render it of considerable use in various diseases. In the sea-scurvy it powerfully obtunds the acrimony of the fluids, and at the same time is easily assimilated into a mild and nutritious chyle. In diarrhoeas and the dysentery it is highly serviceable, by sheathing the internal coat of the intestines, by abating irritation, and gently correcting putrefaction. In the symptomatic fever which arises from the absorption of pus from ulcers in the lungs, from wounds, or from amputation, salep used plentifully is an admirable demulcent, and well adapted to resist the dissolution of the crisis of the blood, which is so evident in these cases. And by the same mucilaginous quality it is equally efficacious in the strangury and dysury, especially in the latter when arising from a venereal cause, because the discharge of urine is then attended with the most exquisite pain, from the ulceration about the neck of the bladder and through the course of the urethra. I have found it also an useful aliment for patients who labour under the stone or gravel." (Dr Percival's Essays, Medical and Experimental.) The ancient chemists appear to have entertained a very high opinion of the orchis root, as appears from the Secreta Secretorum of Raymond Lully, a work dated 1565.