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SOME ACCOUNT 



OF THE 



MEDICINAL AND OTHER USES OF VARIOUS SUBSTANCES 



PEEPARED PROM 



TREES OF THE GENUS PINUS, 



BY 



WILLIAM GEORGE MATOJSt, Ml). 



FELLOW OF THE ROVAI, COLLEGE OF PHYSICrANS, LONDON-, F. R. A. & L. SS. &C. 



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Most species of Pinus may Le 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 diffe- 

 rent genus called by Linnaeus Pistachia, 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 difTcriiig from the resin separated by water, in having an admixture of mucilao-c. 

 The native juice becomes miscible with water, by the mediation of the yolk or the white of an eg<^ but 

 more elegantly by that of vegetable mucilage, and forms a milky hquor. 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 Ta?- and Pitch. The 

 resinous residua of the several processes to which the matter extracted from Pines may be subjected consti- 

 tute 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 

 proper 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 preci.-;ion perhaps than is observable 

 either in the popular discourse, or in the regular pharmacopceiw , of modern times. 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 inmiediately 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 difierent countries different trees have 

 been had recourse to, authors will be found to vary very much in their references to the species of Pinusi 



" The Te^^^ivBo; of Theophrastus, (lib. 3. c. 3.) and Dioscorides, (lib. 1. cap. 7^.) from which the word Terebinthiis seems to have been derived. 

 Pistachia Tcrehinthus yields the resinous juice called in the shops Cyprus and Chio Turpentine, the superiority of which to all the products of the 

 Pine tribe was well known to, and described by, most of the ancient writers on the Materia Medica, (See Dio'sc. loco supra citato.) Genuine 

 turpentine is almost colourless, and emits a peculiar odour, much more agreeable than that of the common turpentines of the shops. 



2 L 



