(seq. 381)

374

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