Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/310

292 the patient ; 4th, the dose and mode of administration of the remedy. In illustration of each of these 1st, a dose of cantharides, which in a patient with the kidneys healthy would be diuretic, would in one with the kidneys acutely congested have the reverse effect ; 2d, if there were much irritation of the gastro-iutestinal tract, acid tartrate of potash, instead of producing diuresis, would probably cause diarrhoea, squills would induce vomiting, digitalis either diarrhoea or vomiting ; 3d, Miudererus spirit, if taken by one exposed to an elevated temperature, would probably produce sweating, but if the temperature were low and the patient cool its action would be diuretic ; 4th, many salines which in small doses are diuretic in larger doses ure laxa tive ; digitalis if too long continued diminishes the flow of urine, irritant diuretics in too large doses diminish or altogether arrest it. Diuretics are indicated, when the quantity of urine is much diminished, or when, although the quantity may be normal, it is wished to relieve some other organ or set of organs of part of their ordinary work, or to aid in carrying off some morbid product circulating in the blood, or to hasten the removal of inflammatory serous exudations, or of dropsical collections of fluid.  DIVAN,, or privy council of the Sublime Porte, is presided over by the sadri-azam, grand vizier (porter), or minister of the interior, who communicates its deliberations to the sultan. It also contains the mufti, sheikh-ul-islam, chief of the ulema, also called principal of the court of cassation, and minister of justice and ecclesiastical affairs, whose fetva is nominally required for the firmans of the Government. Among other members we may mention the seraskier, or war-minister ; the capudan pasha, or minister of marine ; the foreign minister (called, until the reforms of Mahmoud, reis efendi) ; the grand terftardar, or finance minister ; the mustechar, or assistant vizier, who comes in place of the ancient kiaya bey, abolished by Mahmoud ; the tchiaous bashi, or intendant general of police ; and the iutendant of vakufs, or church-lands. The divan meets twice a week ; on emergencies an Ajaik Divani, including the provincial pashas, the beys, aijams, and chief military officers, is summoned. On its advice in cases of popular tumult the sultan used to show himself at a window and promise reforms. But the word divan was applied by Turks, Persians, and Arabs to many kinds of assembly. Thus the Abbaside caliphs had a &quot; Divan of Oppression, &quot; which inquired into charges of tyranny against officers of state. A woman is said to have been president of this divan in the reign of Moctader, at. The Diwan-i-humayun vas the imperial court of Persia ; while in modern Turkey diwan-khane is any large room or hall in which people meet. Hence the word has been applied to the vizier, or head of the assembly: to the bags in which the judicial records of the kazi were kept ; and to the court-hand in which the firmans were written. (See Freytag s Lexicon Arabico-Latinum, ii. p. 37 ; De Sacy Gramm., i. p. 7G.) It was also the name given by the East Indian Company in Bengal to the principal native officers under them. The origin of the word is not clear. One form of it, said to be connected with the adverb [Arabic] = below or inferior, has the meanings of the desert, the upper end of a chamber, anything on which one leans, a sofa formed in masonry, a pillow, a frame. Another form has the meanings of a list, a register of the several classes of officers and servants regulating the amount of royal gifts and salaries, in particular a muster-roll or military pay-book, an album or ledger, an almanack. (Lane s Arabic Dictionary, ed., i. pp. 878-9.) It has been suggested by Fakhreddin Razi that the first of these meanings was really derived from the second ; that in the reign of caliph Omar, a Persian marzban, or satrap, introduced a military pay-book, the Persian name of which (diwan) was trans ferred to a financial board, and subsequently to other boards and to the places where they met. One interesting application of the second meaning is to the selection of several poems by one author in the alphabetical order of the rhyming syllables ; for instance, rhymes of the first class ending in ا (Alif = A); of the second, in ب (Ba = B)5 of the third, in ت (Ta = T), and so on. The most important diwans are those of Ghassani, Sa uti, and Zamrani among the Arabs ; and of HaGz, Saadi, and Jami among the Persians. The plan has been imitated by Goethe in his West-ostlicher Divan (see the notes appended to vol. iii. of the Stuttgart ed. of ), and Goethe was imitated by Riickert. A few meanings of the word divan remain which it is hard to reconcile, e.g., a game or dance of the uiagians, which consisted in turning round in a circle so as to imitate the motions of the heavenly bodies ; the expression &quot; by your leave,&quot; used in entering a Turkish house where there may be unveiled women ; a copper cooking pot wide at the bottom and contracted at the mouth. &quot; Diwan durnak &quot; is the Turkish army phrase for &quot; order arms.&quot; In modern Europe divan often means a cafe.  {{ti|1em|{{larger|DIVER}} ({{lang|la|Colymbidæ}}), a family of natatorial birds closely allied to the grebes, but differing from them in having the front toes entirely webbed, and in their much greater size. Their legs are placed at the further extremity of the body, and both wings and tail are short. This family contains only four species, three of which are common to the northern regions of both hemispheres, while the fourth is exclusively North American. The largest species is the Great Northern Diver (Colymbus glacialis}. It measures about 30 inches in length ; and in its full adult plumage, the male especially is an exceedingly hand some bird. The greater part of its upper surface is black, beautifully marked with numerous rows of white spots ; the head and throat are also black, the latter relieved by two collars of white, spotted with black, while the greater part of the under surface is white. The Great Northern Diver lives chiefly on the ocean, feeding on the smaller fish, as herrings and sprats, in pursuit of which it dives beneath the surface with a facility to which it owes its common name. It can remain a long time under water, and by means of its feet and wings makes extraordinary progress beneath the surface, and while thus submerged it is sometimes taken with a baited hook, and has often been caught in herring and salmon nets. It has great difficulty in rising on the wing, but once aloft its flight is both vigorous and swift ; when in danger, however, it always resorts to diving in preference to flying, and from its exceeding watchfulness, and the great distance it can swim beneath the surface of the water, specimens of the Great Northern Diver are difficult to obtain. During the breed ing season it retires to inland lakes, where it builds its nest within a few feet of the water s edge, and lays two, some times three eggs, of an olive brown colour, sparingly spotted with a darker brown. The young do not attain their perfect plumage till the end of the third year. It remains in Britain during the greater part of the year, but there is no sufficiently satisfactory evidence of its ever breeding in this country ; from the shortness of its absence, however, its breeding ground is probably not further off than Iceland and Greenland. The Black-throated Diver (Coli/mlus ardicus), a remarkably handsome species, and the Red-necked Diver (Colymlus scptentrionalis) also occur in Britain, where, unlike the former species, they remain to breed.}}  DIVIDIVI, the commercial name for the astringent pods of Cæsalpinia coriaria, a leguminous shrub of the sub-order Cwsalpiniece, which grows in low marshy tracts 