The Description.

1. The first Turpentine Tree groweth to the height of a tall and fair tree, having many long boughs or branches, dispersed abroad, beset with long leaves, consisting of sundry other small leaves, each whereof resembleth the Bay leaf, growing one against another upon a little stem or middle rib, like unto the leaves of the Ash tree: the flowers be small & reddish, growing upon clusters or bunches that turn into round berries, which at their beginning are green, afterwards reddish, but being ripe wax black, or of a dark blue colour, clammy, full of fat and oleous in substance, and of a pleasant savour: this plant beareth an empty cod, or crooked horn somewhat reddish, wherein are found small flies, worms or gnats, bred and engendered of a certain humorous matter, which cleaveth to the inner sides of the said cods or horns, which worms have no physical use at all. The right turpentine issueth out of the branches of these trees, if you do cut or wound them, the which is fair and clear, and better than that which is gathered from the bark of the Fir tree.

2. The second kind of Turpentine tree is very like unto the former, but that it groweth not so great: yet the leaves are greater and broader, and of the same fashion, but very like to the leaves of the Pistacia tree. The berries are first of a scarlet colour, and when they be ripe of a sky colour. The great horned cods are sharp pointed, and somewhat cornered, consisting as it were of the substance of gristles. And out of those bladders being broken, do creep and come small flies or gnats, bred of a fuliginous excrement, and engendered in those bladders. The tree doth also yield his Turpentine by dropping like the former.

The Place.

These trees grow, as Dioscorides saith, in Jewry, Syria, Cyprus, Africa, and in the islands called Cyclades. Bellonius reporteth that there are found great store of them in Syria, and Cilicia, and are brought from thence to Damascus to be sold. Clusius saith, that it grows of itself in Languedoc, and in very many places of Portugal and Spain, but for the most part like a shrub, and without bearing Turpentine.

Theophrastus writeth, that it groweth about the hill Ida, and in Macedonia, short, in manner of a shrub, and writhed; and in Damascus and Syria great, in manner of a small tree: he also setteth down a certain male Turpentine tree, and a female: the male, saith he, is barren, and the female fruitful. And of these he maketh the one with a berry red at the first, of the bigness of a Lentil, which cannot come to ripeness; and the other with the fruit green at the first, afterwards somewhat of a yellowish red, and in the end black, waxing ripe in the spring, of the bigness of the Grecians' Bean, and resiny.

He also writeth of a certain Indian Turpentine tree, that is to say, a tree like in boughs and leaves to the right Turpentine tree, but differing in fruit, which is like unto almonds.

The Time.

The flowers of the Turpentine tree come forth in the spring together with the new buds: the berries are ripe in September and October, in the time of Grape gathering. The horn appear about the same time.

The Names.

This tree is called in Latin, Terebinthus: in Italian, Terebintho: in Spanish, Cornicabra: in French, Terebinte: in English, Turpentine tree: the Arabians call it Botin, and with an article Albotin.

The resin is surnamed in Latin, Terebinthina: in High Dutch, Termintijn: in English Turpentine, and Right Turpentine: in the Arabian language Albotin, who name the fruit Granum viride, or green berries.

The Temperature and Virtues.

A. The bark, leaves, and fruit of the Turpentine tree do somewhat bind, they are hot in the second degree, and being green they dry moderately, but when they are dried they dry in the second degeee; and the fruit approacheth more near to those that be dry in the third degree, and also hotter. This is fit to be eaten, as Dioscorides saith, but it hurteth the stomach.

B. It provoketh urine, helpeth those that have bad spleens, and is drunk in wine against the bitings of the poisonsome spiders called Phalangia.

C. The resin of the Turpentine tree excelleth all other resins according to Dioscorides his opinion: but Galen writeth, that the resin of the mastic tree beareth the pre-eminence, and then the Turpentine.

D. This resin hath also an astringent or binding faculty, and yet not so much as mastic, but it hath withal a certain bitterness joined, by reason whereof it digesteth more than that of the Mastic tree: through the same quality there is likewise in it so great a cleansing, as also it healeth scabs, as Galen saith in his 8th book Of the Faculties of Simple Medicines; but in his book Of Medicines According to Their Kinds, he maketh that of the Turpentine tree to be much like the resins of the Larch tree, which he affirmeth to be moister than all the rest, and to be without both sharpness and biting.

E. The fruit of Turpentine provoketh urine and stirreth up fleshly lust.

F. The resin of this tree, which is the right Turpentine, looseth the belly, openeth the stoppings of the liver and spleen, provoketh urine, and driveth forth gravel, being taken the quantity of two or three beans.

G. The like quantity washed in water divers times until it be white, then must be put thereto the like quantity of the yolk of an egg, and laboured together adding thereto by little and little (continually stirring it) a small draught of posset drink made of white wine, and given to drink in the morning fasting, it helpeth most speedily the gonorrhæa, or running of the reins, commonly at the first time, but the medicine never faileth at the second time of the taking of it, which gives stools from four to eight, according to the age and strength of the patient.