MASTICHE. 



163 



personal observation to the great care with which the lentisk was 

 cultivated by the inhabitants. 



When Tournefort^ was at Scio in 1701, all the lentisk trees on the 

 island were held to be the property of the Grand Signor, and if any 

 laud was sold, the sale did not include the Icntisks that might be 

 growing on it. At that time the mastich villages, about twenty in 

 number, were required to pay 286 chests of mastich annually to the 

 Turkish officers appointed to receive the revenue. 



In the beginning of the present century, when Olivier^ paid a visit 

 to the island of Chios, he found 50,000 ocche (one occa=2-82 lb. avdp. 



mastich. 







The month of January, 1850, was memorable throughout Greece 

 and the Archipelago for a frost of unparalleled severity which proved 

 very destructive to the mastich trees of Scio, and occasioned a scarcity 

 of the drug that lasted for many years.' 



The foregoing statements show that for centuries past Scio or Chios 

 was famed for this resin ; there are however a few evidences proving 

 that at least a little mastich used also to be collected in other islands. 

 Amari* quoted an Arabic geographer of the 12th century speaking of 

 " il mastice di Pantellaria cavato da lentischi e lo sforace odorifero" 

 Pantellaria, Kossura of the ancients, is the small volcanic island south- 

 west of Sicily, not far from Tunis. In a list enumerating the drugs 

 to he met with in 1582 in the fair of Frankfurt ' we find even mastich 

 of Cyprus quoted as superior to the common. Cyprian mastich again 

 occurs in the pharmaceutical tariffs of 1612 and 1669 of the same city, 

 and in many others of that time.* • 



The disuse into which mastich has fallen makes it difficult to under- 

 stand its ancient importance ; but a glance at the pharmacopceias ot the 

 15th, ICth, and 17th centuries shows that it was an ingredient of a 

 ^arge number of compound medicines.^ 



Secretion— In the bark of tlie stems and branches of the mastich 

 shrub, there are resin-ducts like those in the aromatic roots of Umbelli- 

 fem or Compositce. In Pistacia they may even be shown m the 

 petioles. The wood is devoid of resin,' so that slight incisions are sufh- 

 cient to provoke the resinous exudation, the bark being not very thick, 

 ana liable to scale off. 



. Collection- In Scio incisions are made about the middle of June 

 \t\m bark of the stems and principal branches. From these incisions 

 ^vhich are vertical and very close together, the resin speedily flows, and 



J Voyage into tJie Levant, i. (1718) 285. 



PfrJ'-^-'-'fJ'^^^ I'^mpire Othoman et la 

 TIVa P^™' 1801)132-136. 



tittio ^t , ^^^ *^i^ mercury was for a short 

 thTf'Jr^^ ^-(14"?.) In Scio, where 



ttoush'^A^^ prcbably quite as severe, 

 to iE T^ r*7^ "0 exact data, the mischief 

 treeal ° ^^^ ^'^^'^^^ with the locality, 

 «on8i,l!^^^f ^^ *° *h«^ north or growing at 

 to th7vf elevations, being killed down 



more fa, ""! ^^^^ t''^^^. ^bile those in 

 tion onl, ■"^"*' positions suffered destruc- 



y in some of their branches. 



4 Storia del Musulmani diSkma,m.[mi) 



' s JFluckigcr, Documente zur Geschkhie der 

 Phcn-macie, Halle, 1876. 31. 



<^IUd. 41. 66. . . 



7 Thus in the London Pharmacopeia ot 



1632, mastich enters into 24 of the 37 clit- 

 fercnt kinds of pill, besides which it is pre- 

 scribed in troches and ointments. 



8 See Unger and Kotsehy, Die Insel 

 Cypern, Wien, 18G5. 424. 



