As to Dr. Hempel, he is silent altogether about the motives which might have prompted Hahnemann to recommend Camphor in cholera. Again Dr. Baehr, in his Science of Therapeutics cannot sum up courage to say a good word in recommendation of Camphor, either with regard to the theory or the practice of its application in cholera. Camphor, he says, has been recommended by Hahnemann himself against the disease in its incipient stage. Experience has not greatly confirmed this recommendation; however one should not neglect it, whenever the mildness of the attack allows such a trial, specially when the disease takes the form of what is called cholera sicca. And then our author proceeds to quote Hahnemann’s instructions, without the slightest attempt towards explaining the rationale of the drug’s action. I have omitted to state that Dr. Hempel omits to give any cholera cases successfully treated by Camphor. In his earlier editions-I have before me the 3rd of 1880-he protests altogether, if may memory serves me aright, against the homoeopathicity of Camphor to cholera.(* Hempel, we may state, does not think that camphor is ever indicated in cholera; but he is we believe the only one who holds such an opinion. At least, we do not remember to have seen such a statement by any other author. (Hoyne’s Clinical Therapeutics.)*) And no wonder he does so, since on Hahnemann’s own estimation, as expressed in his preface to collective symptomatology to the drug, it is all but homoeopathic to the choleraic variety characterized by spasms.
Let us now turn to Dr. Richard Hughes’ Pharmacodynamics. After he has stated that Hahnemann considers chill and depression to be the first effects of Camphor, and the symptoms of stimulation so often observed, to be a secondary action, he continues to say that this opinion is supported by the weighty authority of Trousseau and Pidox. After a full survey of the evidence, they conclude that the essential action of Camphor is ‘refrigerant and sedative’ and describe its full poisonous effects as those of collapse and chill. Stille takes the same view as regards large doses-from thirty to sixty grains. But he thinks on the other hand, that all the evidence goes to show that ‘the direct and primary action of small or medicinal doses- from one to fifteen grains-of Camphor is to stimulate and excite the nervous and vascular systems, and through them the whole organism.’ It has, it would appear an opposite action on the healthy body in large and small does respectively……And then Dr. Hughes continues It was not many years before Hahnemann had an opportunity of giving his views about camphor a practical application, and thereby of a most important contribution of therapeutics. In 1831 Asiatic cholera for the first time invaded Europe. The few physicians then practising homoeopathically sought diligently for its similimum,. that they might be ready to encounter it. Several medicines were suggested; but when Hahnemann spoke out from his retreat in Coethen, he pronounced the one great remedy to be Camphor. He described the well known features of the first stage of the invasion,- the sinking of strength, the coldness, the anxieties; all these occurring before the vomiting, purging and cramps have set in. Here, Hahnemann said, Camphor is a potent and certain remedy. And again in his Therapeutics we read In speaking of camphor in my lectures I have argued that its physiological action is that (in the words of Trousseau and Pidoux) of a refrigerant and sedative, producing in its full poisonous effects a state of collapse with chill. It is thus perfectly homoeopathic to cholera in the stage of invasion, and Dr. Russell justly says that there is perfect unanimity among all homoeopathic practitioners to its efficacy is curing cholera in the first stage…..Whether we should depend upon Camphor in late stages of the diseases of the disease is as yet a moot point. It is diarrhoea or vomiting. But since the condition of algidity and cyanosis to which it does correspond persists when these have set in, and constitute the real peril of the case, there is nothing in our principle which forbids its use at any stage of the attack.
It comes then to this: If we wish to connect Hahnemann’s views on the physiological action of Camphor, with his instructions regarding the use of that drug in cholera, maintaining all along that those instructions have originated in the principle of similia similibus curantur, then we must shut our eyes to some facts, which are by no means of unimportant bearing on the subject under discussion.. We must mainly suppose, in order to put matters in an orderly shape, that Camphor was intended by Hahnemann to be administered at a stage preceding the occurrence of cramps-and this is what our author actually states; while we need only glance at Hahnemann’s instructions, as given in the first of these lectures, in order to see that the stage of cholera in which Camphor is prescribed, is distinctly called by him, the first stage, with its tonic, spasmodic character and Cramp and pain in the calves and other muscles forms a distinct part of this stage.
I believe, gentleman, after what I have said, you will agree with me that the homoeopathicity of Camphor to such choleraic attacks as described by Hahnemann, has, up to this day, remained undemonstrated and undemonstrable. It is only by the aid of Dr. Allen’s collection of cases of true Camphor-poisoning, as recorded in the 10th volume of his Encyclopedia of Pure Materia Medica, that we, for the first time, get a true insight into the therapeutic relation between the effects of Camphor and the first time, get a true insight into the therapeutic relation between the effects of Camphor and the first stage of the spasmodic variety of cholera, with its tonic, spasmodic character, as Hahnemann described it; for we have seen, that Camphor in full and poisonous doses is a powerful excitor of the motor nerves, capable of causing both tonic and clonic spasms, thus being homoeopathic to the first stage of the spasmodic variety of cholera.
_______ Looking at the pharmacodynamic action of the drug so often mentioned from a modern physiological point of view, we cannot help smiling at the dispute of our ancestors with regard to its action on the human organism. So long as the Galenic School of Medicine strictly prevailed, with its division of drugs, with respect to their action, into hot and cold, moist and dry-the opinion was divided as to which class Camphor is to belong to: the hot or the cold one. And a great dispute it must have been indeed, considering that the drug causes a general cold all over the body, with a simultaneous heat in the stomach, often amounting to an almost unbearable sensation of burning. The dispute did not subside after the above mentioned drug division had been given up. In the course of time, it was found more convenient and more in accordance with the nature of the subject, to divide drugs into stimulants and sedatives; but Camphor was found to be as renitent as ever: no body could say what it really is-a stimulant or a sedative. Hahnemann was the first who pointed out, what is now generally admitted, that most of the drugs are possessed of a double action- a primary action. But Camphor seemed to simultaneously manifest a stimulant and sedative effect, so that its action was as problematic to him, as to the rest of his contemporaries. We have seen however by which ingenious way he tried to explain this particular physiological phenomenon. He thought that primary and secondary Camphor- actions alter rapidly, so rapidly that their respective effects, merge into each other, and convey to the prover a collective impression which partakes of both. Ingenious as this explanation no doubt is, I hardly think, it is fully borne out by facts.
Alteration of body temperature is one of the most prominent action of Camphor. Now this is just a sensation, which of all others, is most liable to give rise, under certain circumstances, to a mixed feeling of opposite sensations. Think of a fever and ague patient, how he shivers and trembles, feeling all along hot in some part or the other of the body; think further of the body; think further of the many Aconite provers, and their records in this respect; Alternation of heat and cold- now hot, now cold-hot on one part, cold on another part of the body;-these are standing phrases amongst them. Not so with the Camphor provers, and I may add: Not so with those who have by accident taken comparatively poisonous doses of the drug. I shall not trouble you with the enumeration of their recorded symptoms under the head of fever. You can find them in our Materia Medica and it is well worth your while to look at them. You will then learn that when ever cold was produced in one of the provers, it was a permanent feeling, unmixed with any alternate sensation of heat; the same was the case with the febrile, reactionary heat, mentioned by them, or by other provers. The mixed sensation as spoken of by Hahnemann and by many of his predecessors must then necessarily refer to the general action of the drug, with respect to its stimulating and depressing influence.
