Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A drug made by rubbing up metallic mercury with confection of roses until all the globules disappear. Of this blue-pills are made.
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word blue mass.
Examples
Sorry, no example sentences found.
qroqqa commented on the word blue mass
Shelves in Mrs Albright's sitting-room, where they were handy to get at, held alum, for canker sores; cocoa butter, for the chest; paregoric, for colic and diarrhoea; laudanum, for pain; balsam apples, for poultices; bismuth, for the bowels; magneeshy (carbonate of magnesium), a light, chalky substance, wrapped in blue paper, that was an antacid and a gentle laxative; and calomel and blue mass, regarded by women of Aunt Margery's generation as infallible regulators of the liver. Blue mass came in the form of pills, and she made it by rubbing up metallic mercury with confection of roses.
—James Thurber, 1952, 'Daguerreotype of a Lady', in The Thurber Album
July 10, 2008