Tortoise, this article is only about the tortoise of our country, or land tortoise , and the freshwater one, which differs very little from the former, in particular by its medicinal qualities, the article which follows being especially devoted to the great American turtle , or sea turtle .

In our country, we rarely eat tortoise or freshwater turtle . Thus, we do not have any observations to propose about its dietary usages. As for its medicinal usages, we observe that modern physicians use it commonly as a broth, and it can also be prepared as a compound syrup to which the tortoise gives its name, and which is known in dispensaries under the name of syrupus de testitudinibus resumptivus .

To prepare a tortoise broth, one must take one of these animals of average size, for example, weighing around twelve ounces with its shell. Next, it must be taken out of its shell; the head must then be separated from the body, along with the feet, and the tail; one then proceeds to take the meat, the blood, the liver, and the heart; they are ordinarily boiled with a young chicken, along with the plants and roots suitable to fulfill the intention of the doctor, filtering and expressing the liquid according to the physician’s art. These broths are recommended in all of the books, and are quite generally used by doctors from Montpellier as a sort of specific measure against pulmonary tuberculosis, marasmus, and other diseases of languor. [1] Those who have not seen the effects for themselves believe that a mucilaginous, incrassative, and especially emollient juice which they believe to be inside of a tortoise, softens the blood, restoring it to its natural balm which corrects and envelops its bitterness in the blood; it softens solids, thereby eliminating small crevices on the skin, and even causes incipient ulcers of the chest to heal ; they believe that this so-called glutinous and balsamic liquid is able to cleanse a wound and even to consolidate more advanced internal ulcers; but independently of the victorious arguments against these vain speculations that are deduced in the articles incrassative, mucosal , and nutritive - See these articles . Doctors who have some experience with how tortoise broth works know that its immediate effects consist of facilitating the progressive movement of blood, to the point of sometimes causing a fever, and of pushing considerably towards the capillaries of the skin. It may very well be the case that in many of these illnesses - pulmonary tuberculosis, marasmus, hectic fever, etc. - this last effect, namely, the sudorific effect, contributes very effectively to the curing of these illnesses, in which cutaneous secretion is significantly diminished. But it can also happen in numerous other cases, for example, in the majority of those in which diseases of the lungs started with haemoptysis, it may be the case, as I say, that these tortoise broths both revitalize and drive the patients to their end. This remedy should therefore be administered with a good amount of caution: incidentally, the observations made of its positive effects of which we just spoke are nearly always absent and are at least very rare, because this remedy is commonly used, as are all those that are the most vaunted against chronic diseases of the chest, when these diseases are too advanced, when there is nothing to hope for from remedies.

The illnesses for which tortoise broth clearly has some benefits are those of the skin; but the usage of this remedy must persist for a great amount of time.

Tortoise syrup is prepared in this way, according to the materia medica of Paris: take the flesh of a tortoise , one pound; hulled barley and date flesh, two ounces each; seedless raisins from Damascus, and grated dried licorice, one ounce each; rockfish and jujube, half an ounce each; peeled pine nuts and pistachios, half an ounce each; grilled and crushed cacao fruit, seeds from melon, cucumber and pumpkin, two grosses of each; seeds from lettuce, white poppy, mallow, one gross of each; lungwort leaves, half an ounce; dried violet and water lily flowers, one gross of each (or fresh, an ounce of each). Make a decoction of all of these drugs, according to the physician’s art, in twelve liters of water, which you will reduce by one half.

Filter and clarify with four pounds of rosewater sugar and cook until it has the consistency of a syrup, to which you may add four drops of neroli oil or orange flower essential oil for flavor.

Note: this syrup should not be kept for long as it is not meant to be saved and may spoil.

In this recipe, we wished to gather the medicinal principle of the main substances seen as an eminently incrassative pectoral syrup: in effect, this remedy united an animal jelly which is fairly tough, lenta, that is, that of the tortoise . Many mucilaginous, plant-based, eminently sweet substances; namely, those of dates, raisins, licorice, rockfish, jujube, and sugar; a light mucilage produced from the flowers of violets and water lily; and finally the very nitrous extract of lungwort leaves; the emulsive seeds that have been amassed do not provide anything to this syrup. In the state which the art of medicine has reached today, it is an ignorance and barbarism to keep in the formula of this syrup, pine nuts, pistachios, seeds from melon, cucumber, pumpkin, lettuce, mallow, and white poppy, and in all likelihood, cacao. See Emulsion and Emulsive seeds. Rosewater sugar is puerile; good white sugar should be used in its place. See Sugar and Syrup.

If real pectoral syrups existed, See Pectoral syrup, and if real incrassatives existed, See Incrassative; this syrup would be a pectoral incrassative, par excellence; if a preparation entirely composed of completely alimentary materials could be truly restorative, one should not refuse this quality to tortoise syrup. However, as purely edible substances are neither pectoral nor incrassant, nor restorative in small doses, it is evident that these virtues are attributed to tortoise syrup by charlatanry or by prejudice. One can assume that this preparation has not restored anybody; and that if it has calmed a few coughs, it has always been guttural coughs or coughs from the stomach, and furthermore on subjects who had a good enough stomach to overcome the tasteless & sticky inertia of tortoise syrup.

1. At the time, the medical school at the University of Montpellier was one of the finest in France and, indeed, in Europe.