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
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a word-pecker is “a person who trifles or plays with, or quibbles over, words.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Word-Peckers” I always love it when I’m looking through the dictionary and...
How do dictionaries define colors? And why are some of those definitions so confusing, like “stronger than carmine” and “bluer than fiesta”? Dictionary editor Kory Stamper explains it all in her new book. Plus, the story behind the expression more...