in Medicine. By specifics is not meant such as infallibly and in all patients produce salutary effects. Such medicines are not to be expected, because the operations and effects of remedies are not formally inherent in them, but depend upon the mutual action and reaction of the body and medicine upon each other; hence the various effects of the same medicine in the same kinds of disorders in different patients, and in the same patient at different times. By specific medicines we understand such medicines as are found to be more uniform in their effects than others in any particular disorder.

SPECIFIC Gravity, is a term much employed in the discussions of modern physics. It expresses the weight of any particular kind of matter, as compared with the weight of the same bulk of some other body of which the weight is supposed to be familiarly known, and is therefore taken for the standard of comparison. The body generally made use of for this purpose is pure water. See Chemistry and Hydrodynamics.