guaiacan

English

Noun

guaiacan (plural guaiacans)

1. Alternative form of guaiacum
   • 1801, Samuel Stearns, The American Herbal, Or, Materia Medica:

     The wood, bark, gum, and rosin, are the parts of guaiacan used in medicine. Guaiacan is a warm stimulant, diaphoretic, and corroborant. The resin, improperly called gum, is attenuant, stimulant, expectorant, aperient, and purgative.

   • 1975, Peter Richard Jutro, Lignumvitae Key: the history, natural history and politics of the preservation of a unique natural area:

     Perhaps the most interesting early description of one of the many variants of the guaiacan treatment is that of Nicholas Monardes who wrote of the cure in 1574.

   • 1996, Robert Silverberg, The golden dream: seekers of El Dorado, page 237:

     Seizing an axe, Aguirre began madly chopping at the rollo; but it was of the dense wood called lignum vitae, or guaiacan, and "the steel flew from the hatchets, while the rollo received no particular harm, and some prognosticated that it would remain there, as representing justice, and the name of the king, by whom it had been erected; and not by traitors.