Camphora

Camphor is another medicine that should be in every house for emergency use : — but — keep it in the bathroom ! Don't let camphor come near any of your medicines, for it antidotes most of them.

Especially is it useless to attempt to cure whooping-cough with Drosera in a child smothered with camphorated oil. One has tried it ! Camphor antidotes Drosera, and the child will return " no better "

In our young days there was always a small flask of whisky with a lump of camphor at the bottom, ready for sudden severe chills and for diarrhea. The whisky dissolves all the camphor it is capable of dissolving, and the lump at the bottom ensures a " saturated solution " Of this, a drop on a piece of sugar, quickly repeated if necessary, restores warmth to people chilled beyond easy recovery, and may avert illness. One has seen this rapid transformation many times.

A child of ten, after long, happy hours of blackberrying — and gormandizing — was vomiting unhappily for days, till at last a drop of camphor on sugar cured.

Give camphor always on sugar. In water it nauseates. On sugar it is delightful to take. And the sugar, also, stimulates and warms.

Poisonings by camphor produce sudden intense coldness — as we have seen in our article on Cholera. Hence it is homoeopathic to chills.

And, as Hahnemann tells us, its impression on the human body, " though powerful, is more transient than that of any other drug : therefore it needs very frequent repetition till reaction. In cholera every five minutes, till warmth is restored." In influenza, repeated doses, or constant inhalations, he says.

We have also spoken elsewhere of the extreme rapidity of action of camphor : of its dreadful depressant powers, mental and physical ; its icy coldness and blueness ; its dreadful sufferings.

Its restorative action is equally rapid, given in small doses, repeated till warmth is restored.

Camphor, of course, is stimulating and warming, in small doses, BECAUSE it is so chilling and depressing in poisonous doses.

One cannot reel out memories of the curative effects of camphor because they are so prompt as to be promptly forgotten.

The triumphs of camphor in cholera are given in the article on CHOLERA, a good part of which should properly be included in this drug picture.

The mental symptoms of Camphor are extraordinary. They run into several pages of Allen's Encyclopedia : though other Materia Medicas give very little idea of the extreme mental sufferings that can be evoked by Camphor.

It was a puzzle case, many years ago, that drew one's attention to these symptoms, and, once realized, they are not easily forgotten.

Woman of forty-nine : ill for five months. Floodings : then " cardiac set in ", as she expressed it. Then influenza — three 'times in five months. Nerves terrible ! Heart as if it would burst. Feels as if she were going to die every minute. Very chilly. No energy. Nothing to live for. Every effort exhausts. Worse from a bath ; has to " wash piece-meal ". Was found in a faint in her last bath. Anguish at night : feeling that she is dying. Her relief at realizing, " Why, I am still alive ! "

Heart's action was poor, but there was no disease, in spite of several attacks of rheumatic fever, the first at eighteen.

Luckily she was asked, " What do you take for these attacks ? "

She took Camphor — eight drops of the spirit of camphor in water as often as from seven to eight times a day. Had done so for five or six years. She took it every time she had a heart attack. Her doctor knew of this, and he said it would' not hurt her.

The totality of her symptoms worked out to Lycopodium or Phosphorus. And in spite of the fact that Phosphorus antidotes Camphor, she was given Lyc. 30, three doses. (This was in one's very early days of prescribing.) And of course she was to take no more camphor.

In a fortnight her husband came in great distress. She had seemed more cheerful for a few days after the Lyc. but her nights were still very bad. " Going to die ! " Sobs very much. What was he to do ? Supposing she did die ? — they had left their local doctor ! He did not think that she would die ; but they had fearful scenes every night. She was pretty well by day, but the nights were terrible.

Among the camphor symptoms in Allen's Encyclopedia are these : "Precordial anxiety. Great anxiety and restlessness. Suffocative dyspnoea." " I am dead ! — No, I am not dead ! — Yes, I must be dead ! " " By day, quiet : night and solitude are my terrors." " Attacks of terror by night. Afraid to go to sleep at night." " I suffered such fearful anguish as no fancy can comprehend."

Some of the Camphor ravings were read out to the husband, who said they might have been written of his wife. This time she got Phos. 12, three doses.

A week later she came, so much better as not to be at first recognized. For the last four days, better nights. Nervous feelings all going away. (Says that after her first husband's death she had " nerves " : saw mice all over the bed. It was then that she was first given Camphor and, finding that it helped her, she had used it ever since.) Most decidedly better. Appears normal !

Another week, and she came again. " So well ! Sleeps well. Feels quite well." Looks a vigorous and healthy woman — absolutely changed. Brings another patient.

She continued well.

There are certain symptoms, peculiar to one drug only, which should lead to the consideration of that drug when they crop up in a patient.

Camphor produces this curious condition :

Great coldness of surface, with a desire to uncover. Great heat or sweat, with aversion to uncover

Or, as Kent puts it, " In camphor, during the heat and when the pains are on, he wants to be covered up. The coldness is relieved by cold, he wants more cold."

" The camphor patient," he says, " is a most troublesome patient to nurse. Coldness, frenzy and heat very often intermingle. . . . From the shock of the suffering, the mind is almost gone, or is in a state of frenzy. Coldness then comes on and the patient wants to be uncovered, wants cold air, wants the windows open ; but before all this can be done a flash of heat comes on and then he wants the covers on, and the register turned on, and wants hot bottles ; but this stage now passes off, and while the nurse is bringing the hot bottles he wants her to throw them away, open the windows and have everything cool. . .

" The more violently the patient suffers, the sooner he is cold, and when he is cold he must uncover, even in a cold room."

In cases of any disease, with such strange alternating and contradictory symptoms, camphor in small doses, or in potency, will be curative.

No other drug has quite these symptoms. The nearest is Secale. Here the patient, though cold to touch, cannot bear to be covered, because of his sensations of intense burning, as if sparks were falling upon him. This may be seen in Gangrene. The burnings of Arsenic, on the contrary, are relieved by heat.

Another of these strange and unaccountable symptoms that has led to wonderful curative results, is the profuse sweating only on uncovered parts, of Thuja.

Camphor may be used to antidote many poisons. Hahnemann says, " The rapid exhaustion of its action and the quick change of its symptoms render it incapable of curing most chronic diseases."

But, with later and fuller knowledge, Kent says, " Camphor in potentised form will cure a great many complaints." And others also speak of the virtues of potentized Camphor.

BLACK LETTER SYMPTOMS

Better when thinking of the existing complaint.

Throbbing, like beats with a hammer, in cerebellum, isochronous with pulse, head hot, face red, limbs cool, > in standing ; mostly with such as were deprived of sexual intercourse.

Contraction as if laced together in cerebellum and glabella, with coldness all over.

Very sensitive to cold air.

Nose cold and pointed (in diarrhoea and cholera).

Cold sweat, with vomiting.

Tongue, cold, flabby, trembling.

Anxiety and restlessness, absence of evacuations, frequently chilly or feeling as if cold air was blowing on covered parts ; great sinking and collapse. (Cholera.)

Burning during urination.

Newborn children ; asphyxia ; hard places in skin on abdomen and thighs, quickly increasing and getting harder, sometimes with a deep redness spreading nearly over whole abdomen and thighs ; violent fever, with starlings and tetanic spasms, with bending backward ; they make no water.

Influenza.

Cool breath, as from the grave, playing upon hand held before mouth. (Carbo veg.)

Coldness of limbs.

Congestion to CHEST.

All sequelae of measles.

Cold, clammy, weakening sweat.

PULSE : weak ; not perceptible ; frequent and scarcely perceptible ; accelerated without fever ; very much accelerated, but undulating, and without strength ; very rapid ; full and rapid full and irritable ; irritable in evening ; hard or soft ; extremely. . . small and slow ; small and hard, becoming slower and slower ; small, weak and quite frequent ; could not be counted.

Icy coldness all over, with death-like paleness of face ; diminished circulation to parts most distant from heart.

Effects of shock from injury ; surface of body cold ; face pale and bluish, lips livid ; diarrhea ; pulse feeble, nervous anxiety and stupefaction ; sighing respiration ; great exhaustion.

In the cholera epidemic of 1831 Hahnemann faced the problem, How it was to be met ; and wrote papers, widely distributed, on its treatment. He had followers, even in those days, all the world over. When an idiotic censor banned his teachings he wrote, They seem to prefer delivering all mankind to the grave digger to listening to the good counsel of the new purified medical art."

Camphor poisoning displays all the symptoms of early cholera, and Hahnemann says, It is only when given alone at the first invasion of the disease, that it is so marvelously useful. The patient's friends must employ it, as this stage soon ends in death or in the second stage, more difficult to cure, and not with Camphor."

He gave " one drop of the strong spirit of Camphor on sugar (or in water) every five minutes. Where jaws are locked and nothing can be swallowed, it can be rubbed into the skin, given as a clyster, or its fumes inhaled, when evaporated on hot iron. The quicker this is done, the more rapid and certain the patient's recovery. In a couple of hours warmth, strength, consciousness, rest and sleep return, and he is saved.

Even in the case of persons laid out for burial, where only a finger was seen to move, Camphor spirit mixed with oil, introduced into the mouth, had recalled the apparently dead to life."

Results — briefly. The Russian Consul-General reported that of 70 cases in two places, all were cured ; elsewhere of 1,270 cases only 108 died. In Vienna hospitals, two-thirds treated homoeopathically recovered, while two-thirds in the other hospitals died. In the South of France, where allopathic mortality was go per cent. the homoeopathic mortality was 5 to 7 per cent.

A missionary (South America) was imprisoned for gratuitously curing a number of cholera patients, when the hospital treatment did not cure one. Even in this country, our results were suppressed till demanded in Parliament, " as they would give an unjustifiable sanction to an empirical practice, alike opposed to the maintenance of truth, and to the progress of science."