dormitive

A similar confusion is satirized by Moliere when he has his pompous doctor announce that his sleeping potion works because of its dormitive virtue.

This method is what Molière ridicules in Le Malade Imaginaire, when the chorus sings that opium puts people to sleep because it has a dormitive virtue, the nature of which is to make the senses slumber.

To say that goods command a price because they have power in exchange is like saying that opium puts men to sleep because it has a dormitive power.

The man of our day—the a priori philosopher—tries the question whether opium can cause sleep by finding out in the recesses of his own noddle whether the drug can have a dormitive power: Well! but did not the schoolman do the same?

At length, there came the period when men demanded a straightforward answer to plain questions, and refused to acquiesce in the reply that opium puts us to sleep because there is a dormitive virtue resident in it.