antipestilential

antipestilential

English

Etymology

anti- +‎ pestilential

Adjective

antipestilential (comparative more antipestilential, superlative most antipestilential)

1. Preventing or acting as a remedy against bubonic plague or other infectious diseases.[1]
   • 1685, Robert Boyle, An Essay of the Great Effects of Even Languid and Unheeded Motion, London: Richard Davis, “An Experimental Discourse of some Unheeded Causes of the Insalubrity and Salubrity of the Air,” Proposition 3, p. 65,

     […] during this time [when the Nile is overflowing] the Air is so antipestilential, that not only the Plague does not make a new Eruption; but is either wonderfully check’d or quite suppress’d in those houses that it has already invaded,

   • 1722, Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year, London: E. Nutt et al., p. 36,

     Antipestilential Pills.

Noun

antipestilential (plural antipestilentials)

1. A preventative or remedy against bubonic plague or other infectious diseases.
   • 1665, Gideon Harvey, A Discourse of the Plague, London: Nath. Brooke, Distinction 12, p. 15,

     Neither, as we may universally observe, is the Plague more shie in attaquing those that are armed with the said Antipestilentials, than others that slight all Preservatives.

   • 1848, Theophilus Redwood, Gray’s Supplement to the Pharmacopœa, London: Longman et al., 2nd ed., p. 665,

     The electuary, which was formerly in high repute as an antipestilential, has been replaced, in English pharmacy, by the Electuarium catechu.

References

1. Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language, London, 1755, Volume 1: “ANTIPESTILENTIAL. […] Efficacious against the infection of the plague.”