a. and sb. [f. L. ēuacuant-em, pr. pple. of ēvacuāre: see EVACUATE.]
A. adj. Med. That evacuates or tends to evacuate; promoting evacuation, cathartic, purgative.
1800. Med. Jrnl., IV. 214. Evacuant and debilitating remedies.
1818. A. T. Thomson, Lond. Disp., II. 41. Their general operation is evacuant, either by the stomach, the bowels, or the skin.
1880. Lincoln, trans. Trousseau & Pidoux’s Therapeutics (ed. 9), II. 168. Evacuant treatment in general.
B. sb. 1. Med. A medicine that promotes evacuation; as a purgative, emetic, diaphoretic.
1730–6. in Bailey (folio).
1732. Hist. Litteraria, IV. 9. Those stupendous Effects which vegetable Concretes excite in the Body, both as Evacuants and Alterants.
1753. N. Torriano, Gangr. Sore Throat, 32. The Emetic repeated did not act as an Evacuant in the least.
1830. Lindley, Nat. Syst. Bot., 73. Asarabacca is used by native practitioners in India as a powerful evacuant.
1876. Bartholow, Mat. Med. (1879), 2. To the class of evacuants belong emetics … and diuretics.
2. In Organ-building, a valve to let out the air from the bellows.
