[L., = liquid, fluid.]
† 1. Old Phys. The name given to juice of any sort in the body; esp. the watery part of the blood and other secretions.
1662. J. Chandler, Van Helmont’s Oriat., 115. Religion is amazed … at the finding of a latex or liquor, which being reduced to the least Atomes possible to nature, as loving a single life, would despise the Wedlocks of every ferment. Ibid., 194. Seperation of the Liquor Latex, Urine, and Sweat doth employ the Liver.
1669. W. Simpson, Hydrol. Chym., 31. The exorbitant latex, which before was extravasated runs in its own chanels again.
1766. Spry, in Phil. Trans., LVII. 91. Her blood appeared of a good texture, otherwise than giving off a little more than its due proportion of latex.
2. Bot. A milky liquid found in many plants (in special vessels called laticiferous), which exudes when the plant is wounded, and coagulates on exposure to the air.
1835. Lindley, Introd. Bot. (1848), II. 338. Many plants … when old, have a milky latex.
1858. Carpenter, Veg. Phys., § 58. Destined for the conveyance of the latex or prepared juice of the plant.
1885. Goodale, Physiol. Bot., 96. Upon exposure to the air latex coagulates, and forms upon drying a sticky, elastic mass.
attrib. 1874. Cooke, Fungi, 23. True latex vessels occur occasionally in Agaricus.
1885. Goodale, Physiol. Bot., 95. Latex-cells are not restricted to any one organ of the plant.
