In the Red Sea regions frankincense is valued not only for its sweet odour when burnt, but as a masticatory; and blazing lumps of it are not infrequently used for illumination instead of oil lamps. Its fumes are an excellent insectifuge. As a medicine it was in former times in high repute. Pliny (_Nat. Hist._ xxv. 82) mentions it as an antidote to hemlock. Avicenna (ed. Plempii, lib. ii. p. 161, Lovanii, 1658, fol.) recommends it for tumours, ulcers of the head and ears, affections of the breast, vomiting, dysentery and fevers. In the East frankincense has been found efficacious as an external application in carbuncles, blind boils and gangrenous sores, and as an internal agent is given in gonorrhoea. In China it was an old internal remedy for leprosy and struma, and is accredited with stimulant, tonic, sedative, astringent and vulnerary properties. It is not used in modern medicine, being destitute of any special virtues. (See Waring, _Pharm. of India_, p. 443, &c.; and F. Porter Smith, _op. cit._, p. 162.) Common frankincense or thus, _Abietis resina_, is the term applied to a resin which exudes from fissures in the bark of the Norway spruce fir, _Abies excelsa_, D.C.; when melted in hot water and strained it constitutes "Burgundy pitch," _Pix abietina_. The concreted turpentine obtained in the United States by making incisions in the trunk of a species of pine, _Pinus australis_, is also so designated. It is commercially known as "scrape," and is similar to the French "galipot" or "barras." Common frankincense is an ingredient in some ointments and plasters, and on account of its pleasant odour when burned has been used in incense as a substitute for olibanum. (See Flueckiger and Hanbury, _Pharmacographia_.) The "black frankincense oil" of the Turks is stated by Hanbury (_Science Papers_, p. 142, 1876) to be liquid storax. (F. H. B.) FOOTNOTES: [1] Stephen Skinner, M.D. (Etymologicon linguae Anglicanae, Lond., 1671), gives the derivation: "Frankincense, Thus, q.d. Incensum (i.e. Thus Libere) seu Liberaliter, ut in sacris officiis par est, adolendum." [2] "Sic _olibanum_ dixere pro thure ex Graeco [Greek: o libanos]" (Salmasius, C. S. _Plinianae exercitationes_, t. ii. p. 926, b. F., Traj. ad Rhen., 1689 fol.). So also Fuchs (Op. didact. pars. ii. p. 42, 1604 fol.), "Officinis non sine risu eruditorum, Graeco articulo adjecto, _Olibanus_ vocatur." The term _olibano_ was used in ecclesiastical Latin as early as the pontificate of Benedict IX., in the 11th century. (See Ferd. Ughellus, _Italia sacra_, tom. i. 108, D., Ven., 1717 fol.) [3] So designated from its whiteness (J. G. Stuckius, _Sacror. et sacrific. gent. descrip._, p. 79, Lugd. Bat., 1695, fol.; Kitto, _Cycl. Bibl. Lit._ ii. p. 806, 1870); cf. _Laben_, the Somali name for cream (R. F. Burton, _First Footsteps in E. Africa_, p. 178, 1856).