The Collaborative International Dictionary
Polychrest \Pol"y*chrest\, n. [Gr. ? useful for many purposes; poly`s many + ? useful, fr. ? to use: cf. F. polychreste.] (Med.) A medicine that serves for many uses, or that cures many diseases. [Obs.]
Polychrest salt (Old Med. Chem.), potassium sulphate, specifically obtained by fusing niter with sulphur.
Wiktionary
n. (context medicine English) A medicine that serves for many uses, or that cures many diseases.
Usage examples of "polychrest".
HMS Polychrest and a fine navigator, but one whose calculations had unfortunately convinced him that phoenixes and comets were one and the same thing - that the appearance of a phoenix, reported in the chronicles, was in fact the return of one or another of the various comets whose periods were either known or conjectured.
Who fought the Polychrest till she sunk under him, and swapped her for a corvette cut out from right under their guns?
Sophies, old Surprises, even an old Polychrest, Bolton, that slab-sided cove the Captain pulled out of the sea.
Take that handkerchief off of her head, and cut her hair close, and keep her temples cool, and put some drawing plasters to the soles of her feet, and give her some of my pilulae compositae, and follow them with some doses of sal polychrest.
The Polychrest had delayed their departure, so that they had missed their tide and the best part of a favourable breeze, and had held them back in their sailing all the way, not only by her slowness, but by her inveterate sagging to leeward, so that they were all perpetually having to bear up for her, they being a weatherly set of ships.
The Polychrest meant safety, or so he believed, and the Portsmouth mail left at eleven o'clock that night.
All that remained was to wait while the master took the Polychrest down into action, foiling every attempt at forereaching, keeping her just so in relation to the wind and the Bellone - to last out those minutes while the gap was narrowed.
There were several other Polychrests ashore- Mr Goodridge, Pullings to see his sweetheart, Babbington with his doting parents, half a dozen liberty-men.
The Polychrests poured over the side, thump thump thump down into the boats.
The deck was swarming with Polychrests - they called out to him: tearing high spirits, some quite beside themselves.
The Polychrests will be paid off- Parker is to have the Fanciulla, in compliment to me, which is as cruel a kindness as the world has seen since that fellow in the play, but I have looked after the Polychrest's people - so there will be no difficulty of any kind.
The Polychrests will be paid off- Parker is to have the Fanciulla, in compliment to me, which is as cruel a kindness as the world has seen since that fellow in the play, but I have looked after the Polychrest’s people - so there will be no difficulty of any kind.
The Polychrest was gathering way: the Bellone, hampered by her trailing mast, yawed strangely.