SOME A C CO U N T
OF TIIE
M E D IC IN A L A N D O TH E R USES OF V A R IO U S SU B STAN C E S
PREPARED FROM
TREES OF THE GENUS PINUS,
BY
WIL L IAM GEORGE MATON, M. D.
FELLOW OF THE llOVAL COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS, LONDON, F. R. A. & L. SS. & C.
IVLo s t species of Pinus may be made to yield (and many of them produce spontaneously) a remarkable
resinous juice, usually called Turpentine. This appellation more properly belongs to the product of a different
genus called by Linnaeus Pistachio, which contains the true Terebinthus' of the ancients. The juice of
Pines, however, like that of the Turpentine trees, has an austere, astringent taste, singular viscosity and
transparency, ready inflammability, and a disposition to become more or less concrete. In distillation with
water, it yields a highly penetrating essential oil, and the liquor is found to be impregnated with an acid, a
brittle resinous matter remaining behind. Digestion with rectified spirit of wine completely dissolves all the
resinous part, along with which some portion of the insipid gum, or mucilage, is also taken up. If this
solution be filtered, and diluted largely with water, it becomes turbid, and throws off the greatest part of
the oil, the gummy substance being retained. If the solution be subjected to distillation, the spirit brings
over with it some of the lighter oil, so as to be sensibly impregnated with its terebinthinate odour, and it
leaves behind an extract differing from the resin separated by water, in having an admixture of mucilage.
The native juice becomes miscible with water, by the mediation of the yolk or the white of an egg, but
more elegantly by that of vegetable mucilage, and forms a milky liquor. Exposed to the immediate action
of fire, the roots and other hard parts of the trees produce a thick, black, empyreumatic fluid, which,
containing a proportion of saline and other matter mixed with the resinous and the oily, proves soluble in
aqueous liquors, and, according to its several modifications, constitutes the varieties of Tar and Pitch. The
resinous residua of the several processes to which the matter extracted from Pines may be subjected constitute
the varieties of Rosin, Colophony, &c. There are also other products, both native and artificial, much
employed in medicine and the arts, and which have correspondent denominations, to be specified in their
prbper places.
The terms commonly attached to these substances are, in general, extremely vague, ambiguous, and
inexpressive. Those employed in ancient authors are not to be excepted from the application of this remark;
they have occasioned great difference of opinion among commentators, and, in some instances, they remain
to this day undefined; but, on the whole, they were used with more precision perhaps than is observable
either in the popular discourse, or in the regular pharmacopceice, of modern limes. In the following pages,
which are intended to describe the several substances and processes in detail, we shall endeavour to dissipate
the confusion so far as we are able, by substituting appropriate appellations for those which are either
ambiguous or likely to lead to error, and by arranging immediately under every head such synonyms as may
be adduced without undue latitude of conjecture.
As so many trees of this genus yield the same substances, and as in different countries different trees have
been had recourse to, authors will be found to vary very much in their references to the species of Pinus,
‘ T h e Ttfixtvioi o f Theophrastus, (lib. 3. c. 3.) and Dioscorides, (lib. 1. cap. 76.) from which the word Terebinthus seems to have been derived.
Pistachia Terebinthus yields the resinous ju ice called in the shops Cyprus and Chio Turpentine, the superiority o f which to all the products o f the
Pine tribe was well known to, and described by, most o f the ancient writers on the Materia Mcdica, (See Diosc. loco supra citato.) Genuine
turpentine is almost colourless, and emits a peculiar odour, much more agreeable than that o f the common turpentines o f the shops.
2 L