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Nostrum   Listen
Nostrum

noun
(pl. nostrums)
1.
Hypothetical remedy for all ills or diseases; once sought by the alchemists.  Synonyms: catholicon, cure-all, panacea.
2.
Patent medicine whose efficacy is questionable.



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"Nostrum" Quotes from Famous Books



... aditus facilis, regalis favoris intuitu, ad librorum latebras libere perscrutandas. Amoris quippe nostri fama volatilis jam ubique percrebuit, tamtumque librorum, et maxime veterum, ferebamur cupiditate languescere; posse vero quemlibet, nostrum per quaternos facilius, quam per pecuniam, adipisci favorem." Philobiblion; sive de Amore Librorum (vide p. 29, ante), p. 29: edit. 1599, 4to. But let the reader indulge me with another extract or two, containing evidence [Transcriber's Note: 'of' ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... months of 1890 were a somewhat brilliant series. Sidney Webb on the Eight Hours Bill; James Rowlands, M.P., on the then favourite Liberal nostrum of Leasehold Enfranchisement (which the Essayists demolished in a crushing debate); Dr. Bernard Bosanquet on "The Antithesis between Individualism and Socialism Philosophically Considered"; Mrs. Besant on "Socialism and the School Board Policy"; Mr. (now ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease

... lapidem ne sperne, viator, Qui tali impositus stat super ossa cani. Larga mi natura manu dedit omnia, nostrum Quaecunque exornant nobilitantque genus: Robur erat validum, formae concinna venustas, Ingenui mores, intemerata fides. Nec pudet invisi nomen gessisse tyranni, Si tam dissimili viximus ingenio. Naufragus in nuda ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse

... other in 1236-1239. The letter Non ex odio of Frederick II. (1239) gives the same idea: Revera papa iste quemdam religiosum et timoratum fratrem Helyam, ministrum ordinis fratrum minorum ab ipso beato Francisco patre ordinis migrationis suae tempore constitutum ... in odium nostrum ... deposuit. Huillard-Breholles: Hist. dipl. Fred. II., ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier

... and insecurity of its tenure. Nothing will ever make a seat in this House not an object of desire to numbers by any means or at any charge, but the depriving it of all power and all dignity. This would do it. This is the true and only nostrum for that purpose. But a House of Commons without power and without dignity, either in itself or its members, is no House of Commons for the purposes ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke

... certain medicines, there are others who devote their talents to some speciality. The elephant doctor prepares a medicine which is considered indispensable to the hunters when attacking that noble and sagacious beast; no hunter is willing to venture out before investing in this precious nostrum. The crocodile doctor sells a charm which is believed to possess the singular virtue of protecting its owner from crocodiles. Unwittingly we offended the crocodile school of medicine while at Tette, by shooting one of these huge reptiles as it ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... some most wonderful antidote to the poison of a snake's fangs. In his exhibitions he would allow a cobra to bite a dog or a rabbit, and, in a short time after he had applied his nostrum the animal would thoroughly revive; he advertised his desire to perform upon humanity, but, of course, he could find no one would be fool enough to risk ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini

... schemers, unsuccessful authors, orators, professors, parsons, speakers, pianists, critics, anarchists, who deluged the people with their productions. Every man jack of them was trying to unload his stock-in-trade. The most thriving of them were naturally the nostrum-mongers, the philosophical lecturers who ladled out general ideas, leavened with a few facts, a scientific ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... finesque, qua ad Orientem vergunt, Arabia terminantur; a meridie Aegyptus objacet; ab occasu Phoenices et mare; septemtrionem a latere Syriae longe prospectant. Corpora hominum salubria et ferentia laborom: rari imbres, uber solum: fruges nostrum ad morem; preterque eas balsamum et palmae. Hist. lib. v. ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... narrow or selfish good paramount over a wider or disinterested one. A man, educated as a physician, practiced his profession on scientific principles, and nearly starved on an income of seven hundred dollars a year. He then set up as a quack, compounded a worthless nostrum, and, by dint of impudence, advertising, and other charlatanry, made eighteen thousand dollars a year, and justified his conduct on the ground of his success. By falsehood and cheating he preyed on ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... fiat, cum nuper subditi nostri nonnulli Tripoli in Barbaria et Argellae ab eius loci incolis voluntatem vestram forte nescientibus male habiti fuerint, et immaniter diuexati, Caesaream vestram Maiestatem beneuole rogamus, vt per Legatum nostrum eorum causam cognoscas, et postremo earum prouinciarum proregibus ac praefectis imperes, vt nostri libere in illis locis, sine vi aut iniuria deinceps versari, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt

... never advocated Tariff Reform as a nostrum or as a panacea. I have never pretended that it is by itself alone sufficient to cure all the evils inherent in our social system, or alone sufficient as a bond of Empire. What I contend is that without it, without recovering our fiscal freedom, without recovering the power to deal with Customs ...
— Constructive Imperialism • Viscount Milner

... to me and my damned works the cause; Poor Comus sees his frantic wife elope, And curses wit, and poetry, and Pope. Friend to my life! (which did not you prolong, The world had wanted many an idle song) What drop or nostrum can this plague remove? Or which must-end me, a fool's wrath or love? A dire dilemma! either way I'm sped: If foes, they write, if friends, they read me dead. Seized and tied down to judge, how wretched ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... by enthusiastic hymns, or dreamy fairy tales; whether by the fabulous world of distant times and zones, or by the instincts of the children in the next village. Let us abjure the ever-recommended nostrum of imitation of the old masters in poetry, and rather attach ourselves to homely models, and endeavour, with their help, lovingly and organically to develop their inner life. These were the aims of Walter Scott and his Scotch school, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... can overcome the population difficulty; emigration is only a palliative, and poor-law relief only a nostrum which eventually ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... ignes, Nec poterit ferrum, nec edax abolere vetustas. Cum volet illa dies, quae nil nisi corporis hujus Jus habet, incerti spatium mihi finiat aevi,— Parte tamen meliore mei super alta perennis Astra ferar: nomenque erit indelebile nostrum. Quaque patet domitis Romana potentia terris, Ore legar populi; perque omnia saecula fama Si quid habent veri ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... procedure was to appoint the assessor judges, of whom the consular instructions insisted on there being four. This weighty matter seemed to require the cooperation of the vice consul, Mr. Beaver, a highly respected quack doctor, whose principal nostrum was faith cure plus hot water. After arguing away your existence, which he always could do with extraordinary fluency, he would plunge you into a boiling bath till your imaginary skin turned a deep imaginary scarlet, and then send you home with some microscopic doses of aconite. The best that could ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... has changed. It was the drug, our own secret nostrum, administered at request of the honoured mother of Okumura. Though sorrow was felt, unexpected the good luck in killing the honoured wife. Henceforth come out openly. Who would not drain the sake cups with Koume Dono! The three lands (China, India, ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... & 177 Such are exempted from all benefit of those pardons which Princes vse to giue to other malefactors. Fornerius ad legem 236. in Titulo de verborum significatione, vide illum nam multa erudite scribit, ad propositum nostrum pertinentia.] ...
— A Treatise of Witchcraft • Alexander Roberts

... this union with Christ and mentions it several times in her prayers, Per Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum. She expresses her wish in the preparatory prayer, Aperi, Domine; she wishes the words and sentiments of the psalms to be applied to Jesus, the Saviour, whom David typified, and to whom the psalms in great number ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley

... attend and sit near the pope, when he celebrates any festival; the cardinal priests assist him at mass; and the cardinal deacons attire him. A cardinal is bade by a short breve or writ from the pope in these words: "Creamus te socium regibus, superiorem ducibus, et fratrem nostrum."[69] If a cardinal bishop should be questioned for any offense, there must be twenty-four witnesses produced against him. The Bishop of Ostia hath most privilege of any other, for he consecrates and installs the pope, and goes always next to him. All these cardinals have the repute ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey

... Then, sir, as the greatest favour I can confer upon you, I'll give you a short sketch of the stages of my bowing,—as an excitement, and a landmark for you to bow be—and as an infallible nostrum ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin

... Genere, unumquemque nostrum quasi quendam esse Roscium, dixistique non tam ea quae recta essent probari, quam ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... whose help they can rely, and it is thought that the Government could not oppose the nomination of a member of the Royal Family. It would appeal to popular sentiment; and subject to his Majesty's assent, his Royal Highness the Duke of Nostrum has expressed his ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... entitled 'MusĀ¾um Septalianum, Manfredi SeptalĀ¾, Patricii Mediolanensis, industrioso labore constructum' (Tortona, 1664, p. 44), "Labant philosophorum mentes sub horum lapidum ponderibus; ni dicire velimus, lunan terram alteram, sine mundum esse, ex cujus montibus divisa frustra in inferiorem nostrum hunc orben dela bantur." Without any previous knowledge of this conjecture, Olbers was led, in the year 1795 (after the celebrated fall at Siena on the 16th of June, 1794), into an investigation of the amount of the initial tangential ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... ad inferos, id est, mortuus gehennam gustavit, nihilo minus quam animae damnatorum, nisi quod sibi restituendus erat.—Quandoquidem enim morte corporea nobis nihil profuisset;[90] anima quoque luctari cum morte debuit aeterna, atque hoc modo nostrum scelus suppliciumque dependere." Ac ne quis forte suspicetur, istud Calvino per incuriam obrepsisse, idem Calvinus:[91] "Omnes vos, si qui doctrinam istam solatii plenam exagitastis, perditos" appellat "nebulones." Tempora, tempora, cuiusmodi monstrum aluistis? Cruor ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion

... Non nostrum est tantas componere lites! But Florence is certainly no longer Firenze la Gentile as she so eminently was in the days when ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... science, in the practical application of which thousands were seen prospering; for the immense output of our press represented the industry of hundreds and thousands. A book was concocted, according to a patent recipe, advertised, and sold like any other nostrum, and perhaps the time was already here when it was no longer more creditable to be known as the author of a popular novel than as the author of a popular medicine, a Pain-killer, a Soothing Syrup, a Vegetable Compound, a Horse Liniment, or a Germicide. ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... of the sick-room, unless when he was engaged either in the field or over his bottle. Nay, he would sometimes retire hither to take his beer, and it was not without difficulty that he was prevented from forcing Jones to take his beer too: for no quack ever held his nostrum to be a more general panacea than he did this; which, he said, had more virtue in it than was in all the physic in an apothecary's shop. He was, however, by much entreaty, prevailed on to forbear the application of this medicine; but from serenading his patient every hunting morning ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... self-proclaimed druggists devised a livelihood for themselves by mixing some powders into pills or bottling some secret elixir—normally containing a high alcoholic content or some other habit-forming element—created some kind of a legend about this concoction, and sold the nostrum as the infallible cure for a wide variety of human (and animal) ailments. And many conservative old ladies, each one of them a pillar of the church and an uncompromising foe of liquor, cherished their favorite remedies to provide comfort during the long winter evenings. But of these myriads ...
— History of the Comstock Patent Medicine Business and Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills • Robert B. Shaw

... would devote much energy to opposing the work of other charitable specialists. Lady So-and-so, who advocated this panacea, found herself bitterly opposed by Sir So-and-so, who wanted all sufferers to be made to take his nostrum in his special way. Then sometimes poor Lady So-and-so would throw up her panacea in a huff, and concentrate her energies upon the work of some society for converting Jews, who did not want to be converted, or for supplying red flannel petticoats for South Sea Island girls, who ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... disparagers of this morality would think themselves sure of triumphing if one agreed to look for it in the Imitation only. But even the Imitation is full of passages like these: "Vita sine proposito languida et vaga est";—"Omni die renovare debemus propositum nostrum, dicentes: nunc hodie perfecte incipiamus, quia nihil est quod hactenus fecimus";—"Secundum propositum nostrum est cursus profectus nostri";—"Raro etiam unum vitium perfecte vincimus, et ad quotidianum profectum non accendimur"; "Semper aliquid certi proponendum est"; "Tibi ipsi violentiam ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... sea par excellence, "the great sea" of the Hebrews, "the sea" of the Greeks, the "mare nostrum" of the Romans, bordered by orange-trees, aloes, cacti, and sea-pines; embalmed with the perfume of the myrtle, surrounded by rude mountains, saturated with pure and transparent air, but incessantly worked by underground fires; a perfect battlefield in which Neptune ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne

... could, and with the best intent; But can it please you, thus to league with all Whom he can beg or bribe to swell the scrawl? Would you these wrappers with your name adorn Which hold the poison for the yet unborn? No class escapes them—from the poor man's pay, The nostrum takes no trifling part away: See! those square patent bottles from the shop, Now decoration to the cupboard's top; And there a favourite hoard you'll find within, Companions meet! the julep and the gin. Time too with cash is wasted; 'tis the fate Of real helpers to be call'd too late; ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe

... (dissert. xlii. tom. iii. p. 785—788) has published an original treaty: Concordia inter D. nostrum papam Clementem III. et senatores populi Romani super regalibus et aliis dignitatibus urbis, &c., anno 44 senatus. The senate speaks, and speaks with authority: Reddimus ad praesens.... habebimus.... dabitis presbetria.... jurabimus pacem et fidelitatem, &c. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... a share in the dialogue together with Atticus and himself (ad Att. xiii. 13, 1, 'commotus tuis litteris, quod ad me de Varrone scripseras, totam Academiam ab hominibus nobilissimis abstuli transtulique ad nostrum sodalem et ex duobus libris contuli in quattuor'). Of this second edition in four Books we possess only Book i. (incomplete), and fragments of the others; the scene is at Cumae. The dedicatory epistle to Varro is still preserved (ad Fam. ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton

... often; and Aunt Mimy makes just as much of my baby—I've named him John—as mother does; and that's enough to ruin any child that wasn't a cherub born. And Miss Mimy always has a bottle of some new nostrum of her own stilling every time she sees any of us; we've got enough to swim a ship, on the top shelf of the pantry to-day, if it was all put together. As for Stephen, there he comes now through the huckleberry-pasture, with the baby on his arm; he seems to think there ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... sounded, and the mighty organ thundered forth a welcome, while cardinals and priests lifted their voices, and the clergy sang the "Salvum fac imperatorum nostrum." ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... in Germany. The proportion of the medicinal ingredients in the syrup it is true is small; I shall not warrant it to perform miracles of cure. It is simply offered as a substitute for Fellow's Hypophosphites; whatever therapeutic efficiency that nostrum has, we may count upon obtaining ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... own behalf. It was cheap, clean, certain, and the taste of ratafia was far from unpleasant. But he had a lingering favourable impression of the Warroo medicine-man, whose faith in the efficacy and painlessness of his nostrum was evident, however much was uncertain in ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... scilicet Maximus, quod est episcopus episcoporum, edicit: Ego et moechiae et fornicationis delicta poenitentia functis dimitto."—Tertullian, De Pudicitia, c. 1. "Neque enim quisquam nostrum episcopum se esse episcoporum constituit."—Cyprian, Con. ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... restored, is used for domestic purposes. But at one time it was clearly regarded as pertaining to the cathedral, for the Dean and Chapter, on the festival of St. Faith, presented to it a pair of wax candles. Brantyngham, in 1381, mentions the "fructus et proventus cantariae infra Palatium nostrum Exonie, pro animabus predecessorum nostorum ipsius fundatorum." The old entrance was under the great archway, and battlements, by gracious permission of royalty, surrounded the whole. In the great hall feasts were held for 100 poor people; but the palace now is shorn ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Exeter - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Percy Addleshaw

... at a straw! But instead of making gold of base materials, Cagliostro's brass soon relieved his blind adherent of all his sterling metal. As many needy persons enlisted under the banners of this nostrum speculator, it is not to be wondered at that the infamous name of the Comtesse de Lamotte, and others of the same stamp, should have thus fallen into an association of the Prince-Cardinal or that her libellous stories of the Queen of France should have found eager ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 5 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe



Words linked to "Nostrum" :   remedy, elixir, cure, therapeutic, curative, patent medicine



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