90% of these cases are seen too late for operation, and nearly all recur after operation. The exhausting pain, the serious hemorrhages, and the abdominal septicity associated with a repulsive odour and the absorption of toxic products, which are the chief and ultimately fatal symptoms of that disease, are all directly combated by the administration of oil of turpentine. So beneficial is the action that for years there prevailed the unfortunately erroneous belief that Chian turpentine is actually curative in this condition. But it undoubtedly prolongs life, lessens suffering, and by checking the growth of bacteria upon the cancer reduces the fetid odour and the symptoms of septic intoxication.
Old turpentine and French oil of turpentine are antidotes to phosphorus, forming turpentine-phosphoric acid, which is inert.
TURPIN (d. c. 800), archbishop of Reims, was for many years
regarded as the author of the legendary Historia de vita Caroli Magni el Rolandi, and appears as one of the twelve peers in a
number of the chansons de geste. He is probably identical with
Tilpin, archbishop of Reims in the 8th century, who is alluded
to by Hincmar, his third successor in the see. According to
Flodoard, Charles Martel drove Rigobert, archbishop of Reims,
from his office and replaced him by a warrior clerk named Milo,
afterwards bishop of Trier. The same writer represents Milo as
discharging a mission among the Vascones, or Basques, the very
people to whom authentic history has ascribed the great disaster
which befell the army of Charlemagne at Roncesvalles. It is
thus possible that the warlike legends which have gathered around
the name of Turpin are due to some confusion of his identity with
that of his martial predecessor. Flodoard says that Tilpin was
originally a monk at St Denis, and Hincmar tells how after his
appointment to Reims he occupied himself in securing the restoration of the rights and properties of his church, the revenues and prestige of which had been impaired under Milo’s rule. Tilpin
was elected archbishop between 752 and 768, probably in 753;
he died, if the evidence of a diploma alluded to by Mabillon may
be trusted, in 794, although it has been stated that this event
took place on the 2nd of September 800. Hincmar, who composed
his epitaph, makes him bishop for over forty years, and from this
it is evident that he was elected about 753, and Flodoard says
that he died in the forty-seventh year of his archbishopric. Tilpin
was present at the Council of Rome in 769, and at the request of
Charlemagne Pope Adrian I. sent him the pallium and confirmed
the rights of his church.
The Historia Caroli Magni was declared authentic in 1122 by Pope Calixtus II. It is, however, entirely legendary, being rather the crystallization of earlier Roland legends than the source of later ones, and its popularity seems to date from the latter part of the 12th century. Gaston Paris, who made a special study of the Historia, considers that the first five chapters were written by a monk of Compostella in the 11th century and the remainder by a monk of Vienne between 1109 and 1119. The popularity of the work is attested by the fact that there are at least five French translations of the Historia dating from the 13th century and one into Latin verse of about the same time. According to August Potthast there are about fifty manuscripts of the story in existence. The Historia was first printed in 1566 at Frankfort; perhaps the best edition is the one edited by F. Castets as Turpini historia Karoli magni et Rotholandi (Paris, 1880). It has been translated many times into French and also into German, Danish and English. The English translation is by T. Rodd and is in the History of Charles the Great and Orlando, ascribed to Turpin (London, 1812). See G. Paris, De pseudo-Turpino (Paris, 1865), and Histoire poétique de Charlemagne, new ed. by P. Meyer (1905); and V. Friedel, "Études compostellanes" in Otia Merceiana (Liverpool, 1899).
TURPIN, FRANÇOIS HENRI (1709–1799), French man of letters, was born at Caen. He was first a professor at the university of his native town, then went to seek his fortunes in Paris, where he made some stir in philosophical circles, and especially in that of the magnificent Helvetius; but he was only enabled with difficulty to earn a livelihood by putting his pen at the service of the booksellers. He translated, or rather adapted from the English, Edward W. Montague's Histoire du gouvernement des anciennes républiques (1769), and wrote a continuation of Father Pierre Joseph d’Orleans, Histoire des révolutions d’Angleterre (1786). His Histoire naturelle et civile du royaume de Siam (1771) is an interesting but faulty adaptation of the observations of a vicar-apostolic who had lived for a long time in that country, and who accused Turpin of having misrepresented his ideas. His chief work, La France illustre, ou Le Plutarque français, contains the biographies of generals, ministers, and eminent officers of the law (5 vols., 1777–1790), in which, however, as La Harpe said, he showed himself to be “ni Plutarque ni Français.” He also wrote an Histoire des hommes publics tirés du tiers état (1789).
TURPIN, RICHARD [Dick] (1706–1739), English robber, was
born in 1706 at Hempstead, near Saffron Walden, Essex, where
his father kept an alehouse. He was apprenticed to a butcher,
but, having been detected at cattle-stealing, joined a notorious
gang of deer-stealers and smugglers in Essex. This gang also
made a practice of robbing farmhouses, terrorizing the women
in the absence of their husbands and brothers, and Turpin took
the lead in this class of outrage. On the gang being broken up
Turpin went into partnership with Tom King, a well-known highwayman.
To avoid arrest he finally left Essex for Lincolnshire
and Yorkshire, where he set up under an assumed name as a horse
dealer. He was convicted at York assizes of horse-stealing and
hanged on the 7th of April 1739. Harrison Ainsworth, in his
romance Rookwood, gives a spirited account of a wonderful ride
by Dick Turpin on his mare, Black Bess, from London to York,
and it is in this connexion that Turpin’s name has been generally
remembered. But as far as Turpin is concerned the incident is
pure fiction. A somewhat similar story was told about a certain
John Nevison, known as “Nicks,” a well-known highwayman in
the time of Charles II., who to establish an alibi rode from Gad’s
Hill to York (some 190 m.) in about 15 hours. Both stories are
possibly only different versions of an old north road myth.
TURQUOISE, a mineral much used as an ornamental stone for
the sake of its blue or bluish-green colour. It is generally held that
the name indicates its source as a stone from Turkey, the finest
kinds having come from. Persia by way of Turkey, whence it was
called by the Venetians who imported it turchesa, and by the
French turquoise. The old form turkis, used by Tennyson, agrees
with the German Türkis. Some authorities have suggested that
the word may be a corruption of the Persian name of the stone
piruzeh. Turquoise is a crypto-crystalline mineral, occurring in
small reniform nodules or as an incrustation, or in thin seams
and disseminated grains. Its mode of occurrence suggests its
formation by deposition from solution, and indeed it is sometimes
found in stalactitic masses. The typical colour is a delicate sky-blue,
but the blue passes by every transition into green. In some
cases the colour deteriorates as the stone becomes dry, and may
be seriously affected by exposure to sunlight; whilst with age
there is often a tendency to become green, as seen in examples of
ancient turquoise. The mineral is always opaque in mass, but
generally translucent in thin splinters. Turquoise takes a fair
polish, but the lustre is feeble, and inclines to be waxy; the hardness
is nearly 6, the specific gravity between 2·6 and 2·8.
Much discussion has arisen as to the chemical composition of turquoise. It is commonly regarded as a hydrous aluminium phosphate having the composition 2Al2O3·P2O5·5H2O or rather Al2HPO4(OH)4, coloured with a variable proportion of a copper phosphate, or perhaps partly with an iron phosphate. Professor S. L. Penheld, however, has been led by careful analysis of turquoise from Nevada to propose the general formula: [Al(OH)2,Fe(OH)2,Cu(OH),H]3PO4. Hence turquoise may be regarded chemically as derived from orthophosphoric acid by replacement of the hydrogen by the univalent radicles Al(OH)2, &c. An ingenious counterfeit of turquoise has been formed by compressing a precipitate of cupriferous aluminium phosphate.
Turquoise is usually cut as an ornamental stone in circular or elliptical form, with a low convex surface. In the East, where it is used not only for personal ornament but for the decoration of dagger-handles, horse-trappings, &c., the pieces are not unusually of irregular shape; and when worn as amulets the turquoise is often engraved with Oriental inscriptions, generally passages from the Korān, the incised characters being gilt or inlaid with gold wire. The turquoise has always been associated with curious superstitions, the most common being the notion that it changes colour with variations in the state of the owner’s health or even in sympathy with his affections. It is commonly held to be a “ lucky stone.”
