Astringents

Astringents (Lat. ad, 'to,' and stringo, 'I bind'), medicines employed for the purpose of contracting the animal fibres and canals, so as to check fluxes, hemorrhage, and diarrhoea. The drugs most commonly used as astringents are alum, catechu, oakgalls, rhatany-root, &c. Many of the vegetable astringents owe that property, in whole or in great part, to tannin. A severe degree of cold is a powerful astringent.