1009 



JALAPIC ACID. 



JANSENISTS. 



1010 



ten or twelve days. It occurs in commerce in irregular round or pear- 

 shaped masses, which, when good, are dry, hard, with a brown shining 

 fracture, resinous, not light, somewhat tough. It is often adulterated 

 with portions of the root of white bryony, which, however, are white, 

 or when old, gray, not heavy, very brittle, fracture not resinous, spongy, 

 without smell, but with very bitter taste. Dried pears are also often 

 substituted for it ; but they may be detected by being laid open, when 

 the core will be seen, containing the seeds. Analysed by Cadet de 

 Gassicourt, 100 paits of the dry root yielded resin 10, gummy extrac- 

 tive 44, woody fibre 29, starch, albumen, salts of lime, and potass, &c. 

 According to the more recent analysis of Guibourt, some specimens 

 yield 17 per cent, of resin : false rose-scented jalap as little as 3 per 

 cent. Jalapina, or rhodeoretia, is an alkaloid discovered by Mr. Hume. 

 It is a transparent, colourless, odourless, tasteless resin. These 

 qualities recommend it to children, for whose complaints it is extremely 

 well suited. 



Ipomcea turbetkum yields the jalap of the East Indies. But there is 

 scarcely a single species of this genus that does not yield more or less 

 of a purgative principle, and generally called jalap. These, and nearly 

 all substitutes for the genuine jalap, are enumerated by Dr. Theodor 

 Martius, in his ' Pharmakognosie des Pflanzenreiches,' Erlangen, 1832. 

 The so-called twi'js (stipites) of jalap, are really the roots or tubers of 

 fpomaa arizabtnnt (Ledanois), Conrolrulut orizabentit of Pelletan. 

 Ipomi' let, Benth., ' Bot. Register,' January, 1841. It yields 



the inferior, light, or male jalap, and contains an alkaloid called 

 Pararhodeoretia. 



Its excellence depends upon the quantity of resin ; a white jalap 

 (from C. Mechoacanna) i sometimes met with, which contains only 

 2 per cent of resin ; its dose must be five or six times as great as that 

 of the genuine jalap. 



Jalap is ranged witb the drastic purgatives, and where one of a 

 resinous kind is desired, is that usually selected. Its action is gene- 

 rally certain, and when in combination with other substances, mild and 

 speedy. It does not seem greatly to influence the nerves of the abdo- 

 men, but rather the vascular system of the pelvis and lymphatic 

 system of the intestines. It is given in obstruction of the liver, vena- 

 porta, and diseases connected with these organs, such as hypochondriasis, 

 melancholia, jaundice, dropsy, and intermittent fevers; but at the 

 commencement of common fevers, along with calomel, it is of great 

 utility ; also in the inflammatory or turgescent stage of hydrocephalus, 

 and in the treatment of worm cases. 



JALAPIC ACID (C M H M S? ). An uncrystallisable acid produced 

 by the metamorphosis of jalapin under the influence of alkalies. It is 

 homologous with convolvulic acid. 



JALAPIX. [COSVOLVULIK.] 



JALAPINOL (C 3I H 3I O, ?). A crystalline substance insoluble in 

 cold water, produced by the action of boiling dilute acids upon jalapin 

 and jalapic acid. Treated with caustic alkalies it forms jalapinolic acid 



JALAPINOLIC ACID. [JALAPIKOL.] 



JALLOFFS, or YALLOFFS, a negro tribe who occupy a consider- 

 able tract of country between the rivers Senegal and Gambia. They 

 are considered as the finest race of negroes in this part of Africa ; 

 they are tall and well made, their features are regular, and their phy- 

 siognomy open. Though bordering on the Foolahs and Mandingos, 

 they differ from both, not only in language, but in features. The noses 

 of the Jalloffs are not so much depressed nor the lips so protuberant 

 as among the generality of Africans, but their skin is of the deepest 

 black. They are chiefly employed in agriculture, and have made some 

 progress in the useful arts, especially in the manufacture of cotton 

 cloth, which they make better than any of the neighbouring tribes. 

 They are divided into several independent states, or kingdoms, which 

 are frequently at war either with their neighbours or with each other. 



JAM AICINE is found with Surinamine in the Geofrtea inermit and 

 0. Surinamenti*. They are crystallisable alkaloids, capable of forming 

 salt* with the acids, which are precipitated by tannin and corrosive 

 miblimate. 



JANIZARIES is the name of a Turkish militia once formidable but 

 now extinct. The origin of this body dates from the reign of Amu- 

 rath, or Murad I., who, after having overrun Albania, Bosnia, Servia, 

 and Bulgaria, claimed the fifth part of the captives, from among whom 

 he chose the young and able-bodied, and had them educated in the 

 Mohammedan religion, and for the military profession. These recruits, 

 beingwluly disciplined, were formed into a distinct body of infantry, 

 divided into ortas, or battalions, and they were consecrated and blessed 

 by a celebrated dervish called Hadji Bektash, who gave them the name 

 of Yeni Cheri, or " New Soldiers." They soon became the terror of the 

 enemies of the Ottomans : being completely weaned from their friends 

 and homes, they were enthusiastically devoted to their sultan as their 

 common father ; and a strict discipline, regular pay, and constant 

 service gave them habits of order and obedience far superior to the 

 irregular bodies which formed at the time the armies of the princes of 

 Christendom. A f ter the death of Solyman the Magnificent, and the 

 general though gradual decay of the Ottoman warlike spirit, when the 

 Hiiltanti no longer took the field in person, the Janizary body was no 

 longer recruited exclusively from choice and young captives, but by 

 < nrolmenta of Osmanlces, who being born and bred in the faith of 

 Islam, had not the zeal of proselytes, and were besides connected by 



ARTS AMD SCL DIV. VOt,. IV. 



ties of consanguinity and friendship with the body of the people around 

 them, and not exclusively devoted to the will of the sultan. In 1680 

 Mohammed IV. abolished the law by which the Christian rayahs, or 

 subjects of the Porte, were obliged to give a portion of their children 

 to the sultan to be educated in the Mohammedan faith and enrolled 

 into the militia. By the original laws of their body the Janizaries 

 could not marry, but by degrees the prohibition was evaded, and at 

 last totally disregarded. Their children's names were then inscribed on 

 the rolls of their respective ortas ; and their relations and friends, men 

 often unfit for any warlike service, obtained a similar honour, which 

 gave them certain privileges and protection from the capricious oppres- 

 sion of their rulers. In this manner a crowd of menials, low artisans, 

 and vagabonds, came to be included in the body of Janizaries ; even 

 rayahs and Jews purchased for money the same privilege ; but all this 

 motley crew lived out of the barracks, where only a few in time of 

 peace were present at the appointed hours for receiving their soups or 

 rations. Military exercises were abandoned ; the Janizaries merely 

 furnished a few guards and patroles for the city, many of them being 

 only armed with sticks ; and they never assembled as a body except on 

 pay-day, when they defiled two by two before their nazirs, or in- 

 spectors. Still they were formidable to the government from their 

 numbers, which were scattered all over the empire, and their influence 

 and connections with the mob of the capital. They repeatedly muti- 

 nied against the sultans, and obliged them to change their ministers, or 

 even deposed them. In our own days they dethroned Selim ; and in the 

 beginning of the reign of the late Sultan Mahmood they broke out 

 into a dreadful insurrection which lasted three days, and in which the 

 Vizir Mustapha Bairactar lost his life. In both instances they were 

 impelled by their hatred of the Nizam Djedid, or new troops, dis- 

 ciplined after the European fashion. At last Mahmood resolved to 

 put down the Janizaries ; and having for several years matured his 

 plan with the advice of his favourite Halet Effendl, and gained over 

 their aga and others of their principal officers, he issued an order that 

 every orta or division should furnish 150 men to be drilled according 

 to the European tactics. This, as he had foreseen, led to a revolt ; the 

 Janizaries assembled in the square of the Etmaidan, reversed their 

 soup-kettles according to their custom in such cases, and, invoking the 

 name of their tutelary saint Hadji Bektash, they began by attacking and 

 plundering the bouses of their enemies. But the body of topjis, or 

 cannoniers, thebostandjis, or guards of the seraglio, and the galiondjis, 

 or marines, were prepared; the sultan, mufti, and the ulemas, assem- 

 bled in the mosque of Achmet, pronounced a curse and a sentence of 

 eternal dissolution on the body of the Janizaries ; the sandjak shereef, 

 or sacred standard, was unfurled, and a general attack on the Janizaries 

 began, who, cooped up in the narrow streets, were mowed down by 

 grape-shot, and the rest were despatched by the muskets and the yata- 

 ghans of their enemies, or burned in their barracks. About 25,000 

 Janizaries are said to have been engaged in the actual revolt, and most 

 of them perished : the others concealed themselves or were exiled 

 into Asia. This carnage took place in June, 1825, and from that time 

 the Janizaries as a body have ceased to exist. Macfarlane, in his 

 'Constantinople in 1828,' gives a vivid account of that catastrophe. 



JANSENISTS, a sect which appeared in the Roman Catholic church 

 about the middle of the 17th centiiry. They professed not to attack 

 the dogmas but only the discipline of that church, which however 

 stigmatised them as heretical in some of their tenets. They took 

 their name from Janssen, or Jansenius, bishop of Ypres in the 

 Netherlands, who published a book entitled ' Augustinus," in which he 

 supported, by means of passages from the writings of St. Augustine, 

 certain principles concerning the nature and efficacy of divine grace 

 which appear to partake greatly of Calvin's doctrine of predestination. 

 This question of grace and predestination had already been discussed 

 in the church at various times, and had proved a stumbling-block to 

 many theologians. Michael Baius, professor at Louvain, had been con- 

 demned in 1567 by a papal bull, and obliged to disown seventy-six 

 propositions taken from his writings, chiefly concerning that abstruse 

 subject. Jansenius however died quietly at Ypres in 1638, and it was 

 not till several years after his death that some Jesuit theologians, on 

 examining his book, discovered in it the following five propositions, 

 which they denounced as heretical: 1. That there are certain com- 

 mandments of God which even righteous men, however desirous, find 

 it impossible to obey, because they have not yet received a sufficient 

 measure of grace to render obedience possible. 2. That nobody can 

 resist the influence of inward grace. 3. In our fallen state of nature 

 it is not required, in order that we be accounted responsible beings, 

 that we should be free from the internal necessity of acting, provided 

 we are free from external constraint. 4. The Semi-Pelagians were 

 heretical in maintaining that the human will has the choice of re- 

 sisting or obeying the internal grace. 5. That to maintain that Christ 

 died for all men, and not solely for those who are predestinated, is 

 Semi-Pelagianism. 



After much controversy, these five propositions were condemned by 

 a bull of Pope Innocent X., in the year 1653, as impious and blasphe- 

 mous, and the bull was received by the French prelates, and promul- 

 gated throughout France with the king's consent. Several learned 

 men, who disliked the Jesuits and their latitudinarian system of 

 ethics, wrote not to defend the five propositions, but to prove that 

 these propositions did not exist in the book of Jansenius, at least not in 



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