1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Poultice

POULTICE, a mass of linseed-meal, bread or other substance, sometimes of medicinal herbs, mixed with boiling water and enclosed in muslin or linen and applied to the skin to reduce inflammation, to induce warmth, or when mixed with mustard, &c., as a counter-irritant. The word seems to have been taken from the plural pultes of the Lat. puls, pottage, pulse, Gr. πόλτος.