spiritus rectorn.

1729 E. Strother Pract. Observ. Epidemical Fever 36 The etherial Oil, blended in a peculiar Quantity with the essential Acid and Water, as Lemery observes, gives the Taste peculiar to Turpentine; this is by some call'd the Spiritus Rector.

1768 D. Magenise Doctr. Inflammations 117 May not therefore the same thing be said of the lymph, which the former accounts to be as it were the spiritus rector of the human body.

1858 Cheshire Observer 2 Oct. 4 Twenty-five years ago, when the manufacture of spa and mineral waters began, they met with violent opposition from the members of this faculty, as being deprived of all the good qualities of the natural ones,—as wanting..in a spiritus rector, or vital power, which alone gave them any medicinal qualities.

1923 Ann. Rep. Essent. Oils, Aromatic Chemicals & Related Materials 152 The spiritus rector changes in each separate essence and confers the particular properties to each.

2012 E. C. Spary Eating Enlightenment iv. 183 Healthiness was an outcome of the distiller's skill in extracting the most volatile or spirituous part of aromatic substances, known as the spiritus rector.

1876 St. Louis (Missouri) Globe-Democrat 31 Dec. 11/5 He it is who at this time is unquestionably the spiritus rector of Roman Catholicism in France.

1935 A. Revusky Jews in Palestine xii. 202 The leader and spiritus rector of this movement, Vladimir Jabotinsky.

1977 Times 20 Dec. 13/6 It has often been reported that the international oil companies were the real spiritus rector for the explosion of oil prices during the winter of 1973–74.

2006 Mod. Lang. Rev. 101 1182 Leading figures such as Thomas Mann..lent their name to the project, but its spiritus rector was a young nobleman of impeccable anti-Nazi credentials.