Author: Anne Ewbank / Source: Atlas Obscura
Turpentine is a common sight in hardware stores and art cabinets. Made from pine resin distilled until clear, the oily liquid been used for hundreds of years as a water repellant, paint thinner, solvent, and lamp oil.
(It is very flammable.) But for thousands of years, it’s also been used as a medicine, even though most modern doctors would strongly advise against ingesting it at all.Turpentine has deep roots in medical history. In Looking for Longleaf: The Fall and Rise of an American Forest, author Lawrence S. Earley explains that the Romans used it to treat depression, naval surgeons during the Age of Sail injected it (hot) into wounds, and medics used it to try and stop heavy bleeding. Doctors found it appealing, even though they knew about its less-desirable effects.
“The rectified oil of Turpentine is a medicine much less used than it deserves to be. The reason probably is, the fear of its producing violent effects on the alimentary canal and urinary organs,” one doctor wrote in 1821. He also wrote that turpentine could greatly be put to use killing internal worms, since insects instantly died if exposed to the liquid. He ordered one patient afflicted with tapeworms to drink turpentine every few hours. During the Civil War, doctors administered turpentine internally and externally to…
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