a. and sb. [ad. med.L. sternūtātōrius (neut. -um as sb.), f. L. sternūtāt-, sternūtāre: see STERNUTATION and -ORY.]
A. adj.
1. Causing or tending to cause sneezing.
1616. T. Adams, Dis. Soul, 11. For the curing of this bodily infirmity, many remedies are prescribed … with scarification, gargarismes and sternutatory things.
1710. T. Fuller, Pharm. Extemp., 394. Sternutatory Powder.
1829. Landor, Imag. Conv., Chaucer, Boccaccio, & Petrarca, Wks. 1853, I. 404/2. He had about him a powder of sternutatory quality.
2. Of or pertaining to sneezing. (In quots. humorously pedantic.)
1842. Thackeray, Fitz-Boodle Papers, Pref. He … was seized with a violent fit of sneezing—(sternutatory paroxysm he called it).
1858. Lewes, in Chamb. Jrnl., 19 June, 399/2. The showers of snuff which had too often attacked my sternutatory muscles.
1859. F. E. Paget, Curate Cumberworth, 329. Miss Martha replied by a sneeze. A terror seizing me lest this sternutatory conclusion might be a preliminary to another fit of hysterics, I immediately took my leave.
B. sb. A substance that causes sneezing; esp. a drug, usually in the form of powder, used to excite sneezing; an errhine.
1634. T. Johnson, Parey’s Wks., XXVI. xxxv. (1678), 654. Drie Errhines that are termed sternutatories, for that they cause sneezing, are made of powders onely.
1646. Sir T. Browne, Pseud. Ep., IV. ix. 200. Physitians … in persons neere death doe use Sternutatories, or such as provoke unto sneezing.
1722. Quincy, Lex. Physico-Med. (ed. 2), 15. Vomits and Sternutatories.
1811. A. T. Thomson, Lond. Disp. (1818), 273. Tobacco is chiefly employed as a sternutatory, and is the basis of all the kinds of snuff generally used.
1876. trans. Wagner’s Gen. Pathol., 29. Muscular irritability is excited … by powerful light, by sternutatories, [etc.].
