Word: jalap
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...generally considered the most eminent physician in the U.S. The "cure" he hit upon came from a clue in a manuscript on yellow fever written half a century before by a part-time physician and mapmaker. Rush's cure consisted simply of massive mercury (i.e., calomel) and jalap purges and copious bloodletting. When he tried it on a hopeless case and saw his patient recover, he used it on others, soon broadcast to the world that the yellow fever was licked...
Favorite drugs were "mercurials, calomel, opium, niter, Glauber's salts, Dover's powders, jalap, Peruvian bark-and by the 1840s, quinine" in heroic doses. One doctor reported a patient who took so much calomel that his teeth fell out, then the upper and lower jawbones came out "in the form of horse shoes." One treatment for the ague involved putting the patient in a draft between two cabins, stripping off his clothes, pouring cold water over him until he had a "pretty powerful smart chance of a shake...
Among common drugs administered to make the gall bladder evacuate the bile are calomel (mercurous chloride), rhubarb, mandrake, jalap. New are the hormones secretin and cholecystokinin...
...REAL ARGUMENT LIES IN WHETHER IT IS AN EUPHEMISTIC CONTRACTION OF "DILAPIDATED" OR SPRINGS DIRECTLY FROM "GALLOP," MEANING TO MOVE BY SPRINGING LEAPS. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH AZTEC PURGATIVE ROOTS AND SUGGEST PUNISHING ED FOR SUCH TRIPE BY MAKING HIM EAT HIS WORDS SEASONED WITH SOME JALAP AND A WELL TURNED JALOPY...
...Jalopy," "jaloppi" -or "jollopy" (Weseen's Dictionary of American Slang}-has for years been the name used by U. S. second-hand car dealers and taxi drivers for an exhausted automobile. Possible derivation: jalap, a purgative root...
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