provang

English

Noun

provang (plural provangs)

1. A 17th century medical instrument for cleansing the stomach, consisting of a whale-bone rod, with a silk button on the end.
   • 2013 October 15, Kenneth Davids, Coffee: A Guide to Buying, Brewing, and Enjoying, Fifth Edition, St. Martin's Press, page 226:

     One Englishman named Walter Rumsey invented an "electuary" of coffee to be applied with an instrument called a provang.

   • 2017 July 5, Markman Ellis, Eighteenth-Century Coffee-House Culture, vol 4, Routledge, page 12:

     In addition to using the provang, Rumsey proposed coffee and tobacco as effective remedies in creating a balanced humoural mixture in the stomach.

   • 1954, Andrés Uribe Compuzano, Brown Gold: The Amazing Story of Coffee, Random House, page 13:

     How Rumsey's patients could enjoy coffee after an encounter with the provang is impossible to understand.

Anagrams

• Vangorp