heroic dose
n.— «One drop of it was fully as efficient as curiosity in killing a cat.…An early nineteenth century pharmacopoeia lists a tobacco enema. About the same time the surgeon and anatomist, Sir Ashley Cooper, recommended this in a heroic dose as a preliminary to reducing difficult hernias, because it caused such extreme languor that the patient had “not the power to exert any of the voluntary muscles of the body,” thus almost repeating the Royal Society’s classic experiment with the cat.» —“Some Old Bizarre Medical Remedies” by Hartwin A. Schulze Scientific Monthly May, 1935. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Cat hair may be something you brush off, but cat hair is also a slang term that means “money.” In the same way, cat beer isn’t alcoholic — some people use cat beer as a joking term for “milk.” And imagine walking on a...
One secret to writing well is … there is no secret! There’s no substitute for simply sitting down day after day to practice the craft and learn from your mistakes. Plus, childhood mixups around word definitions can lead to some funny stories...