VARIATIONS IN MEANING OF TERMS. 245 



-various internal applications, especially purgatives, of a violent 

 and drastic nature (from the word sAavveu, agito, moveo, 

 stimulo), but by succeeding authors it was exclusively applied 

 to denote the active matter which subsides from the juice of 

 the wild cucumber. The word Fecula, again, originally meant 

 to imply any substance which was derived by spontaneous 

 subsidence from a liquid (from/<#, the grounds or settlement 

 of any liquor) ; afterwards it was applied to Starch, which is 

 deposited in this manner by agitating the flour of wheat in 

 water ; and lastly, it has been applied to a peculiar vegetable 

 principle, which, like starch, is insoluble in cold, but com- 

 pletely soluble in boiling water, with which it forms a gela- 

 tinous solution. This indefinite meaning of the word fecula 

 has created numerous mistakes in pharmaceutic chemistry ; 

 Elaterium, for instance, is said to be fecula, and, in the 

 original sense of the word, it is properly so called, inasmuch 

 as it is procured from a vegetable juice by spontaneous subsi- 

 dence, but in the limited and modern acceptation of the term, 

 it conveys an erroneous idea ; for instead of the active prin- 

 ciple of the juice residing in fecula, it is a peculiar proximate 

 principle, sui generis, to which I have ventured to bestow the 

 name of Elatin. For the same reason, much doubt and 

 obscurity involve the meaning of the word Extract, because 

 it is applied generally to any substance obtained by the evapo- 

 ration of a vegetable solution, and specifically to a peculiar 

 proximate principle, possessed of certain characters, by which 

 it is distinguished from every other elementary body." 



A generic term is always liable to become thus limited to 

 a single species, or even individual, if people have occasion to 

 think and speak of that individual or species much oftener 

 than of anything else which is contained in the genus. Thus 

 by cattle, a stage- coachman will understand horses ; beasts, in 

 the language of agriculturists, stands for oxen ; and birds, 

 with some sportsmen, for partridges only. The law of lan- 

 guage which operates in these trivial instances, is the very 

 same in conformity to which the terms Gco?, Deus, and God, 

 were adopted from Polytheism by Christianity, to express the 

 single object of its own adoration. Almost all the terminology 



