[a. 16th c. F. catholicon, -cum, a. L. catholicum, or Gr. καθολικόν adj., neut. sing., universal.]
1. An electuary supposed to be capable of evacuating all humours; a universal remedy or prophylactic; panacea. arch. [Used in Fr., in 16th c. by Ambrose Paré; its earlier history does not appear.]
1611. Bible, Pref., 3. Men talke much … of Catholicon the drugge, that it is in stead of all purges.
1642. Sir T. Browne, Relig. Med., II. § 9. Death is the cure of all diseases. There is no Catholicon or universal remedy I know but this.
1732–69. De Foe, etc. Tour Gt. Brit. (ed. 7), II. 364. A Catholicon, and good for every thing.
1808. Med. Jrnl., XIX. 338. Nor do I mean to assert, that it is such a catholicon as to exclude other adjuvants.
1833. Chamb. Jrnl., No. 62. 73. A little plaister is his catholicon for all evils.
b. fig.
1631. Gouge, God’s Arrows, I. § 66. 109. The spirituall Catholicon, that generall remedy which is fit for any malady, prayer.
1638. R. Baker, trans. Balzac’s Lett. (1654), II. 29. A good wife is a Catholicon, or universal remedy for all the evils that happen in life.
a. 1734. North, Life Ld. Kpr. Guildford (1742), I. 224. He … so made his Wit a Catholicon, or Shield, to cover all his weak Places and Infirmities.
1832. Southey, Lett. (1856), IV. 274. The panacea for all moral and political evils—the true and only catholicon.
1859. Jowett, Ep. Romans, Atonement & Satisf., § 3. To assume revelation or inspiration, as a sort of shield or Catholicon, under which the weak points of theology may receive protection.
† 2. a. A universal formula. Obs. b. A comprehensive treatise.
In the latter sense applied by Johannes de Balbis de Janua, as the title of his celebrated Latin Grammar and Dictionary, the Catholicon or Summa, made in 1286; whence in later times given to various vocabularies of Latin and some vernacular, e.g., the Catholicon Anglicum, an English-Latin Vocabulary dated 1483.
1647. Jer. Taylor, Lib. Proph., vii. 131. Neither one sense nor other can be obtruded for an Article of faith, much lesse as a Catholicon instead of all.
1837–9. Hallam, Hist. Lit. (1847), I. i. § 90. 79. The Catholicon of John Balbi, a Genoese monk…. It consists of a Latin grammar, followed by a dictionary.
1865. Way, Promp. Parv., Pref. p. xxiii. The student of mediæval antiquities … will find in the Catholicon an auxiliary rarely to be consulted without advantage and instruction. Ibid., p. lxiv. The valuable English-Latin Dictionary, frequently cited … as the ‘Catholicon Anglicum.’
