"Nitre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... powerful freezing mixture may be made by pulverizing Glauber's salts finely, and placing it level at the bottom of a glass vessel. Equal parts of sal ammoniac and nitre are then to be finely powdered, and mixed together, and subsequently added to the Glauber's salts, stirring the powders well together; after which adding water sufficient to dissolve the salts, a degree of cold will be produced, frequently below Zero ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 372, Saturday, May 30, 1829 • Various
... Coffee-House, the Library, were closed. Of four daily newspapers, only one continued to be published. Some people constantly smoked tobacco,—even women and children, did so; others chewed garlic; others exploded gunpowder; others burned nitre or sprinkled vinegar; many assiduously whitewashed every surface within their reach; some carried tarred rope in their hands, or bags of camphor round their necks; others never ventured abroad without a handkerchief or a sponge wet with vinegar at their noses. No one ventured to shake ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... give her some sweet spirits of nitre," said I, taking out a little vial. "Will you ask the servant for a glass of ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... dregs—the bottle of old hair tonics, dead catsups, syrups of undesirable preserves, condemned extracts of vanilla and lemon, decayed chocolate, ex-essence of beef, mixed dental preparations, aromatic spirits of ammonia, spirits of nitre, alcohol, arnica, quinine, ipecac, sal volatile, nux vomica and licorice water— with traces of ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... patient is not quite worn out with it before it is begun, or too far gone in the common duration of life and even in that case, it will lessen the pain, lengthen life, and make death easier, especially if joined with small interspersed bleedings, millepedes, crabs' eyes prepared, nitre and rhubarb, properly managed. But the diet, even after the cure, must be continued, and never after greatly altered, unless it be ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... Nitre, vitriol, cinnabar, alum, salt ammoniac, sublimated mercury, rock salt, alcali salt, common salt, rock alum, alum schist (?), arsenic, ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... cylinders, and their action upon the magnet was proved to be precisely the same in kind as that of the cylinders of bismuth. The enquiry was also extended to other insulators: to phosphorus, sulphur, nitre, calcareous spar, statuary marble, with the same invariable result: each of these substances was proved to be polar, the disposition of the force being the same as that of bismuth and the reverse of that of iron. When a bar of iron is set erect, its lower end is ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... devotion. Not the proudest of the Pharaohs was more sumptuously preserved than he! In that labor of love there was no cunning secret of the art that I did not employ. Night and day I worked alone; and while he lay in the long nitre bath, I watched or slept beside him. Then I enwound him thousand-fold in finest linen smeared with fragrant gum, and hid his beloved form in the coffin he had ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... cried Tom, "it couldn't be. I know what gunpowder's made of—nitre, brimstone, and charcoal; and ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... the Red fumes of Spirit of Nitre, and, the resembling Redness of the Horizontal ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... characters shall become visible only when subjected to the action of fire. Zaffre, digested in aqua regia, and diluted with four times its weight of water, is sometimes employed; a green tint results. The regulus of cobalt, dissolved in spirit of nitre, gives a red. These colors disappear at longer or shorter intervals after the material written upon cools, but again become apparent upon the reapplication ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... wash thee with nitre, and take thee much sope, yet thine iniquity is marked before me, ...
— The Children's Six Minutes • Bruce S. Wright
... labour of Copyists by device of Movable Types was disbanding hired Armies, and cashiering most Kings and Senates, and creating a whole new Democratic world: he had invented the Art of Printing. The first ground handful of Nitre, Sulphur, and Charcoal drove Monk Schwartz's pestle through the ceiling: what will the last do? Achieve the final undisputed prostration of Force under Thought, of Animal courage under Spiritual. A simple invention it was in the ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... elaborate, resembles to such an extent, at least some, if not indeed most of those, that are used at the present time, that it seems worth while giving his directions for it. He took equal parts of cuttle bone, small white sea-shells, pumice stone, burnt stag's horn, nitre, alum, rock salt, burnt roots of iris, aristolochia, and reeds. All of these substances should be carefully reduced to powder and then mixed. His favorite liquid dentifrice contained the following ingredients,—half a pound each of sal ammoniac and rock salt, ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... 1043. NITRE—Saltpetre.—This, in over-doses, produces violent poisonous symptoms. Vomiting should be immediately induced by large doses of mucilaginous, diluent drinks; but emetics which irritate the stomach should ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... found upon the maritime plain is salt or brackish. There is nothing concerning which the African traveller should be so particular as water; bitter with nitre, and full of organic matter, it causes all those dysenteric diseases which have made research in this part of the world a Upas tree to the discoverer. Pocket filters are invaluable. The water of wells should be boiled and passed ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... meeting with the Salt of our Microcosm, shall immediately cast us into that Fermentation and Putrefaction, which will utterly dissolve All the Vital Tyes within us; Ev'n as an Aqua Fortis, made with a conjunction of Nitre and Vitriol, Corrodes what it Siezes upon. And when the Divel has raised those Arsenical Fumes, which become Venomous. Quivers full of Terrible Arrows, how easily can he shoot the deleterious Miasms into those Juices ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... related that Napoleon I, to secure saltpetre for making gunpowder, composted "filth, dead animals, urine and offal with alternate layers of turf and lime mortar," and asserted that "a nitre-bed is the very pattern of a vine-border" and that "when the materials have been turned over and over again for a year or two they are in exactly the proper state to yield either gunpowder or grapes." Napoleon's ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... Audacious; but, that seat soon failing, meets A vast vacuity. All unawares, Fluttering his pennons vain, plumb-down he drops Ten thousand fathom deep, and to this hour Down had been falling, had not, by ill chance, The strong rebuff of some tumultuous cloud, Instinct with fire and nitre, hurried him As many miles aloft. That fury stayed— Quenched in a boggy Syrtis, neither sea, Nor good dry land—nigh foundered, on he fares, Treading the crude consistence, half on foot, Half flying; behoves him now both oar and sail. As when ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... Spirits of mint, of cinnamon, of sweet fennel-seeds, of treacle, aqua vitae, spirits of ammoniacal volatile oil, of sal ammoniac, dulcified spirits of nitre and of sal ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... notion of the matter is, that the water of this pool acquired its medicinal virtues from the mud settled at the bottom, which was charged with metallic salts, perhaps from sulphur, allum, or nitre. And whenever it happened that the water was troubled by any natural cause whatsoever, perhaps a subterraneous heat, or rains; these salts were raised up and mixed with it, and might well be beneficial to those, ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... being expelled, it would return to its natural consistence. This being the case, nothing else is required for the freezing of water, than a certain degree of cold, which may be generated by the help of salt, or spirit of nitre, even under the line. I would propose, therefore, that an apparatus of this sort should be provided in every ship that goes to sea; and in case there should be a deficiency of fresh water on board, the seawater may be rendered potable, by being ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... very difficult thing to get clear of a cold if taken in time. Confinement to the house for a day, or even two, a lowered diet, a mixture of the solution of acetate of ammonia and spirits of sweet nitre the first day, some aperient medicine and an ordinary cough mixture the second or third day, warmer clothing and avoidance of exposure to high winds; this treatment will be found successful in nine cases out ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various
... for instance, is burned with carbonaceous matter, the product is carbonate of potash. The ashes left by burning wood contain the same salt. The ashes left by burning sea-weed produce carbonate of soda. When nitre is burned with sulphur, the product is sulphate of potash, etc. These have all been called generically, even in modern times, nitre, having each a certain prefix well understood by the adept, or chemist, of ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... cutting of the sharpest instrument: whence the houses that are built of it in the two cities, appear as hewn out of one solid rock, and become harder, the more they are exposed to the inclemencies of the weather. This hardness may, with good reason, be ascribed to the salt of nitre, which contracts a certain viscidity from the rain wherewith it is mixed, and which easily penetrates into these stones, because their substance is spongy and cretaceous, and adheres ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... cellar where the eggs were supposed to be hatching in their nest. An unwary hound sniffing about the door got a throatful of the stinging smoke and fled yowling. Hydrochloric acid, vitriol and nitre-glycerine are kittle things to meddle with, and the place ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... are too often little other than long-drawn Interjections, of Woe is me and Cursed be ye. So soon as History can philosophically delineate the conflagration of a kindled Fireship, she may try this other task. Here lay the bitumen-stratum, there the brimstone one; so ran the vein of gunpowder, of nitre, terebinth and foul grease: this, were she inquisitive enough, History might partly know. But how they acted and reacted below decks, one fire-stratum playing into the other, by its nature and the art of man, now when all hands ran raging, and the flames lashed high over shrouds ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... couldn't keep up no longer, and I've been a-tellin' Mis' Pennel and her grand'ther. I tell you it has been a solemn time; and if you're goin' in, don't go in with none o' your light triflin' ways, 'cause 'as vinegar upon nitre is he that singeth songs on a heavy ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... buying wine. We hear of him at Westerhaim, on the river Iller, settling a dispute among the fishermen. On one of his journeys to fetch wine from Constance, at the hospice there he fell in with a man who could fire balls out of a machine by means of nitre, and who boasted that he could demolish with this weapon a certain castle in the neighbourhood. Over supper they began to argue, the artillerist maintaining that nitre was cold, and that the explosion which discharged ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... mortar, mixed with that of stale foulness of every kind, rises with the dust, and defiles every current of air; the corners are filled with accumulations of stones, partly broken, with crusts of cement sticking to them, and blotches of nitre oozing out of their pores. The lichenous rocks and sunburnt slopes of grass stretch themselves hither and thither among the wreck, curiously traversed by stairs and walls and half-cut paths, that disappear below starkly ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... apply the chloride of lime and the tincture of myrrh, and give a gentle aperient. He should endeavour to rouse and support the system by tonic medicines, as gentian and colomba with ginger, adding to two drachms of the first two, and one drachm of the last, half an ounce of nitre; but he should place most dependence on nourishing food. Until the mouth is tolerably sound, it is probable that the animal will not be induced to eat; but it will occasionally sip a little fluid, and, therefore, gruel should be always within its reach. More should occasionally be ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... Freckles.—Finely powdered nitre is excellent. Apply it to the face with the finger moistened with water and ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... On the clock shelf in the sitting-room there is a bottle of sweet spirits of nitre; it's the only bottle there, so you can't make any mistake. It will help until the doctor comes. I wonder you didn't send ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the famous river of Missouri, which we are now to cross. This river takes its rise at eight hundred leagues distance, as is alledged, from the place where it discharges itself into the Missisippi. Its waters are muddy, thick, and charged with nitre; and these are the waters that make the Missisippi muddy down to the sea, its waters being extremely clear above the confluence of the Missouri: the reason is, that the former rolls its waters over a sand and pretty firm ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... Putula or Rios and in Guadalupe. In these mineral districts we also encounter lead. Amianto (incombustible crystal) also abounds in Niezca and in the vicinity of Monclova, as also nitre in San Blas, jurisdiction of San Buonaventura. In the hills of Gizedo, correspondent to the district of Santa Rosa, ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... a five miles' chase, the sight of the man acted on my moral nature as vinegar is erroneously supposed to act on nitre. I reined-up beside him. The Irresistible was about to encounter the Immovable; and, even in the excitement of the time, I awaited the result with scientific interest. When a collision of this kind takes place, it sometimes happens that the Irresistible bounces off in a more or less damaged ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... made in the country. They are very dexterous in throwing the lance. Gunpowder is also manufactured there; the brimstone is brought from Fas; the charcoal they make; and he believes they prepare the nitre.[83] Their arrows are feathered and barbed; the bows are all cross-bows, with triggers; the arrows, 20 to 40 in a quiver, are made of hides, and hang on the left side. The king never goes to war in person. The soldiers have a peculiar dress; ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... which Worcester and the English dictionaries spell re, while Webster, the Century, and the Standard prefer er:Calibre, centre, litre, lustre, maneuvre (I. maneuver), meagre, metre, mitre, nitre, ochre, ombre, piastre, sabre, sceptre, sepulchre, sombre, spectre, ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... red sulphuret of arsenic and take it up with oak gum, as much as it will bear. Put on a rag and apply, having soaped the place well first. I have mixed the above with a foam of nitre, and it ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... care to dip your clothes in a weak solution of nitre before they are worn; for that prevents their blazing, even if they should catch fire," said mamma. "But you must not let that keep you from taking ...
— The Nursery, November 1877, Vol. XXII. No. 5 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... this tendency to run into definite forms, and nothing is easier than to give scope to this tendency by artificial arrangements. Dissolve nitre in water, and allow the water slowly to evaporate; the nitre remains and the solution soon becomes so concentrated that the liquid condition can no longer be preserved. The nitre-molecules approach each other, and come at length within the range of their polar forces. ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall |
