Pliny reports the use of sarcocolla in creating paints and as a medicine.
Dioscorides and Galenus mention its power of healing wounds.
The 8th century philosopher Al-Kindi used sarcocolla as a component of many recipes in his medical formulary Akrabadhin, among others for leprosy.
The most detailed description is given by the 13th century botanist and pharmacologist Ibn al-Baytar on the basis of Greek and Arabic sources as well as his own observations. The resin consumes the festering flesh of putrescent abscesses, assists the ripening of tumours, carries away mucus and yellow gall, and is a remedy for inflammations of the eye, for agglutinating eyelids and for excessive secretion of the eye. Taken internally, the resin is a strong purgative, but causes also the hair to fall out. The best sarcocolla consists of crushed, white seeds, mixed with walnut oil. Measured out in different ways, it can be mingled with other drugs (sagapenum, myrobalanum, aloes, bdellium, etc.). When taken neat, the resin can be lethal; therefore, the dose should not be more than 2¼ dirhams. Ibn al-Baytar, however, maintains that he saw in Egypt women partaking, immediately after a bath, of up to 4 ounces of anzarūt, together with the pulp of the yellow melon, hoping to increase thus their corpulence.
According to the c. 13th-century  ("Book of Fires") of Marcus Graecus, sarcocolla was an ingredient of Greek Fire.
The 16th-century surgeon Brunus of Calabria recommended a plaster for skull fractures consisting of sarcocolla, bitter vetch meal, dragon's blood, and myrrh.