Pl. cortices. [L. cortex bark.]
† 1. fig. The external part; the outer shell or husk. Obs.
1660. H. More, Myst. Godl., V. xv. 178. Neither in the inward meaning nor outward Cortex of this Prophecy. Ibid. (1681), Exp. Dan., App. ii. 285. To distinguish betwixt the Cortex and the Pith … of these … Symbolical Visions.
1665. Glanvill, Sceps. Sci., xxi. 133. ’Tis as difficult to trace natural operations to any practical advantage, by the sight of the Cortex of sensible Appearances.
† 2. Med. The bark of various trees used medicinally; absol. Peruvian bark. Obs. (exc. as Latin.)
1680. Sir T. Browne, Wks. (1848), III. 472. Formerly they gave not the cortex to quartanarians.
1693. Sir H. Sloan, in Phil. Trans., XVII. 924. The Cortex Winteranus, commonly sold in the Shops.
1712. trans. Pomet’s Hist. Drugs, I. 37. As you give the Cortex to cure Quotidian, Tertian and Quartan Agues.
1803. Med. & Phys. Jrnl., X. 357. By the use of common dressings to the wound and the free use of the cortex, and a generous diet, the boy, in the space of about a fortnight, got quite well.
3. Applied variously to differentiated external structures in a plant or animal body, or organ: spec. a. Anat. The outer gray matter of the brain. b. The outer part or ‘cortical substance’ of the kidney. c. Bot. That part of the fundamental tissue which lies outside the fibrovascular bundles; the bark.
1677. Hale, Prim. Orig. Man., I. ii. 65. Covered with … a Cortex that is obduced over the Cutis, as in Elephants.
1741. Monro, Anat. Bones (ed. 3), 153. Each Tooth is composed of two Substances; an external Cortex. Ibid., Anat. Nerves (ed. 3), 14. The Cortex of the Encephalon.
1826. Good, Bk. Nat. (1834), I. 168. The solid parts of the trunk of the plant consist of cortex, cuticle, or outer bark.
1875. Bennett & Dyer, trans. Sachs’ Bot., II. v. 573, note. Sometimes … the [fibro-vascular] bundles [in a leaf-stalk] … form a closed hollow cylinder which divides the fundamental tissue of the leaf-stalk into pith and cortex.
1888. Rolleston & Jackson, Anim. Life, 833. The protoplasm … is divisible into an exoplasm (cortex) and endoplasm (medulla).
