Oleum. Dippel's animal oil.

This is a common animal oil highly rectified: the number of rectifications required is in proportion to the former state of the oil: seldom less than six are necessary. It must be closely kept from the access of the air.

Animal oils thus rectified are thin, limpid, and of a subtile, penetrating, not disagreeable smell and taste. They are antispasmodic, sedative, and diaphoretic, in doses, from five to thirty drops. Hoffman speaks highly in their favour, observing, that one dose excites sweat, and supports it for twenty-four hours without languor or debility; and that if twenty or more drops are given on an empty stomach, six hours before the accession of an intermittent fever, they frequently remove the. disorder: in chronical epilepsies and other convulsive symptoms, especially if given before the usual time of the attack, and preceded by proper evacuations, they are effectual.

They lose much of their quality by keeping.

All empyreumatic oils dissolve in sp. vini rect.; and the more they are rectified, the easier is their solution, a circumstance in which they differ from essential oils, which, by repeated distillations, become more difficult to dissolve.