The internal shell of the cuttle-fish, a light, cellular, calcareous body of an elongated oval form enclosed in the substance of the mantle; formerly used in medicine as an antacid and absorbent, and now for pounce, as a polishing material, etc.
1547. Salesbury, Welsh Dict., Bron alarch, Scuttel bone.
1575. Turberv., Faulconrie, 273. The powder of a cuttell bone.
1656. Ridgley, Pract. Physick, 152. Driness of the Tongue is cured with scraping of cuttle bone.
1836. Todd, Cycl. Anat., I. 546/1. The … Cuttle-bone … formerly figured in the Materia Medica as an antacid.
1841. Penny Cycl., XXI. 373/1. The cuttle-bone, as it is erroneously termed, consists of various membranes hardened by carbonate of lime, without the smallest mixture of phosphate.
