Medical properties and uses.-Camphor is stimulant, narcotic, and diaphoretic; but its stimulant powers are very transitory, and followed by sedative effects. It acts chiefly on the nervous system : and, like sulphur, it transudes through the skin, and is exhaled by the lungs. The Arabians appear to have first used camphor as a medicine2, and by them it was regarded as refrigerant; an opinion which, even in more recent times, has been the subject of much controversy. In moderate doses it operates as a cordial, increasing the heat of the body, and exhilarating; besides softening, and rendering the pulse fuller, and promoting diaphoresis: in larger doses, it allays irritation and spasm, abates pain, and induces sleep; but in immoderate doses camphor produces vomiting, vertigo, delirium, convulsions, and other deleterious effects.

As a stimulant, camphor is beneficially used in all fevers of the typhoid kind3, cynanche maligna, malignant measles, confluent small-pox, and as an adjunct to bark and opium to check the progress of gangrene; and in spasmodic affections, as hysteria, epilepsy, chorea, asthma, and painful menstruation. Its narcotic and anodyne effects being produced with very little increase of pulse, it has been successfully employed for allaying pain and irritation even in some inflammatory diseases; as pneumonia, acute rheumatism, gonorrhoea, smallpox when attended with convulsions, gout, and in the delirium of mania, and inflammatory fevers. But in these cases its use should be preceded by evacuations; and the remedy itself combined with nitre, or antimonials : and in maniacal cases with opium.4 Camphor is also given internally, to obviate the irritating effects of some other medicines, and to increase the activity of others; it lessens the irritating quality of mezereon, cantharides, the saline preparations of mercury, and drastic purgatives; it corrects the nauseating property and prevents the irritation which squill is apt to produce on the coats of the bladder; and combined with senna it greatly aids its purgative power.

1 A stream of perfectly dry hydrochloric acid gas transmitted through recently distilled oil of turpentine, gradually converts it into a crystalline suhstance closely resembling camphor. Ann. de Chim. et Phys. t. 47. p. 225.

2 They call it Canfur as well as Caofoor. - Clusios Exot. 245., quoted by Alston.

3 Etmuller says, "remedium in febribus malignis sine Camphora est instar militis sine gladio."

4 In some experiments upon dogs with camphor, M. Defermon found that contraction of the spleen takes place, producing a rugose appearance of its surface, and a movement throughout the whole viscus.

Camphor may be administered in the solid form; but, as in this state it is apt to occasion nausea, it is generally ordered in a state of minute division, suspended in fluids by means of mucilage or the yolk of eggs; sometimes by magnesia, which, assisting its division, and rendering it smooth as starch, admits of its combination with acids; and as several of the gum-resins, when triturated with it, form a soft uniform soluble mass, they also may be employed for diffusing it in water.1 It may be advantageously united with ammonia, aromatics, opium, bark, and other tonics, in low fevers, and diseases of debility; with calomel, antimonials, digitalis, and neutral salts, in inflammatory diseases; with the fetid gums and other narcotics, in spasms and convulsive affections; and with squill and ipecacuanha, in pulmonary complaints.

As a local anodyne, camphor is used in frictions, dissolved in oils, alcohol, or acetic acid, for allaying rheumatic and muscular pains; and, with the addition of laudanum, we have found it of great efficacy when rubbed on the abdomen, in flatulent colic, dysentery, and inflammations of the viscera. In collyria it is useful in opthalmia; and dissolved in oil, as an injection, in ardor urinae; and as an enema in the tenesmus occasioned by ascarides, or other irritations of the rectum.2 A pill of camphor and opium, or a solution of camphor in oil of turpentine, put into the hollow of a carious tooth, affords almost immediate relief in toothach. Twenty or thirty grains of camphor, added to a common poultice and applied to the perineum, allays chordee in gonorrhoea.

The dose of camphor is from grs. ij. to Эj., repeated at shorter or longer intervals according to the extent of the dose and the nature of the case. It may be rubbed up with mucilage and almond emulsion, so as to suspend it in water; or it may be readily suspended in milk; and these forms are preferable to that of pills or bolus. The bad effects of an overdose are most effectually obviated by opium.

Officinal preparations.-Mistura Camphorae, L. D. Emulsio camphorata, E. Spiritus Camphorae, E. D. Tinctura Camphorae, L. D. Tincturae Camphorae composita, L. E. D. Acidum aceticum camphoratum, E. D. Linimentum Camphorae, L. E. Linimentum Camphorae comp.L.T. Linimentum Hydrargyri comp.L. Linimentum Saponis, L. E. D. Linimentum Saponis cum Opio, D. Linimentum Terebinthinae, L.

1 Murray's Syst. of Mat. Med. and Pharm. ii. 157.

2 In some constitutions it must be exhibited in this form with caution : "two scruples of it given to a woman in a glyster proved so irritating as to bring on pains resembling those of labour." - Heberden, Med. Trans, vol. i. p. 473.

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4. Laurus nobilis.1

Officinal. Lauri baccae et folia, Lond. Dub. Lauri nobilis folia; baccae; oleum fixum, Edin. Laurel berries and leaves, and the fixed oil of the berries.2

Syn. Bates de Laurier (F.), Lorbeeren (G.), Bobek drzewo (Pol), Bacchi di Lauro lticcio (I.), Bayas (S.).

This tree is a native of Italy and the south of Europe; but is cultivated in this country, and is not uncommon in our gardens, flowering in April and May. It is a handsome evergreen; and although it appears as a shrub in England, yet in its native soil and climate it rises twenty or thirty feet in height. The bark is smooth, and of a green olive colour. The leaves are lanceolate, about three inches long, and an inch and a half broad, on short petioles, smooth, entire, veined, often waved at the margin, of a firm texture, and a deep green colour. The flowers are male and female on different plants, in short racemes, and of an herbaceous or yellowish white colour. The corolla is divided, in both descriptions of flowers, into four oval segments. The berry is superior, of an oval shape, fleshy, and of a dark purple, almost black colour.