Crossword-Solution: BENZOIC 7 letters, 4 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 20

Benzoic acid, or flowers of benzoin, a peculiar vegetable acid, C6H5.CO2H, obtained from benzoin, and some other balsams, by sublimation or decoction.

See Ïyl.] (Chem.) A compound radical, C6H5.CO; the base of benzoic acid, of the oil of bitter almonds, and of an extensive series of compounds.

Nothing surprised me more than that a solution of benzoic acid, so weak as to be hardly acidulous to the taste, should act with great rapidity and be highly poisonous; for I am informed that it produces no marked effect on the animal economy.

Many of the poisonous acids, such as hydriodic, benzoic, hippuric, and carbolic (but I neglected to record all the cases), caused the secretion of an extraordinary amount of mucus, so that long ropes of this matter hung from the leaves when they were lifted out of the solutions.

But as several innocuous acids, though much diluted, such as benzoic, acetic, &c., as well as some essential oils, are extremely poisonous to Drosera, and quickly cause strong inflection, it seems probable that strychnine, nicotine, digitaline, and hydrocyanic acid, excite inflection by acting on elements in no way analogous to the nerve-cells of animals.