Glass bottle with glass stopper, containing yellow liquid. Labelled "Oil of Turps". Turpentine (also called spirit of turpentine, oil of turpentine, and wood turpentine) is a fluid obtained by the distillation of resin obtained from live trees, mainly pines. It is composed of terpenes, mainly the monoterpenes alpha-pinene and beta-pinene. It is sometimes colloquially known as turps. The word turpentine derives (via French and Latin) from the Greek word τερεβινθίνη terebinthine, the name of a species of tree, the terebinth tree. Bond's Companion to the Medicine Chest, pre-1862, p. 33-34: “Oil of turpentine. In doses of from 10 to 15 drops, repeated two or three times in a day, is occasionally resorted to in the sciatica or hip gout, and lumbago or pain in the loins; also in slight internal strains received from falls, or other accidental causes. Oil of turpentine, in like doses, is found to suppress internal hemorrhages of the passive kind, (that is to say, where debility is present, and the disease is unaccompanied with inflammatory symptoms,) better than any other medicine; in large doses, it is a powerful remedy for eradicating tape-worm. Externally, oil of turpentine is applied to scalds and burns, affording immediate relief, where the outer-skin or cuticle is not raised, and, when mixed with four times its quantity of opodeldoc, to chilblains, before they have broken, to allay the itching and inflammation.” (Other applications mentioned: chronic rheumatism, chorea, chronic dysentery, to expel tapeworm, diuretic in old asthmas, dropsy, suppression of urine, haemorrhage, revulsive in apoplexy).