Colonial North America: Countway Library of Medicine

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Materia Medica

Stimulants

of Philadelphia, it acts as a stimulus on man. Dr Griffith mentions a case of a man who had swallowed some camphor and was affected with a burning in the stomach, congestion in the head, and in another the same effects with nausea, these effects ceased upon vomiting, a large dose of it produced delirium, there has been a number of experiments made which is unnecessary to relate. Hoffman says in Spirits Wine it does not increase the pulse that it induces precordia, Cullen says he has given it in doses of twenty grains without the effect of increasing the pulse and sometimes with the effect of diminishing it, he tells us he had a patient labouring under mania, a young woman between 25 and 30 years of age he was resolved to attempt a cure by camphor and beginning with five grains and increasing it by the same quantity every evening he brought her at length to the dose of Ʒfs [½ dram] and that dose says he I repeated in immitation of Dr Hinnis for four nights together during all this I never found the frequency of the pulse increased, and when the largest dose was employ’d the pulse was frequently brought to ten strokes less in the minute then it had been before, at the same time so little change was affected in the mania that I was resolved to give up the trial, but the Apothecary by gross error was led to suppose

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Materia Medica

Stimulants

that I had mistaken Dr Hinnis’s practice and had not carried the dose so far as he had done, proceeding on this supposition he prescribed forty grains of camphor for the next nights dose, in about half an hour after it had been taken, I was sent for to see my patient, she appeared quite insensable with the pulse hardly perceptable and the breathing almost suspended, with a pailness and coldness over her whole body I supposed she was dying, but by holding some spirits of hartshorn to her nose and chafing her extremities with warm flannel she was so far recovered as to swallow a little warm milk and by these means she continued so for some time, the pulse and the heat of her body was a good deal augmented and she had the appearance of being in a sleep, when she recovered her pulse was in the natural state of the mania very much. In this case I find no primary effects of camphor being a sedative because Dr Cullen did not see his patient untill half an hour after she had taken the medicine. Dr Monroe had a pretty just Idea of camphor Several years ago I attended a gentleman who was accustomed to take about a teaspoonfull at a time of the mixture of camphor at one time he took Ʒi [1 dram] of it, it threw him into a delirium and his eyes became inflamed upon the whole I have no doubt it is a