Now this mixed sensation of simultaneous depression and excitement, which puzzled Hahnemann so much in the case of Camphor, but which is certainly common to many a disease and to many a drug’s action, although it appears to be more prominent or more instantaneous in the case of Camphor-this mixed sensation of simultaneous depression and excitement finds its full explanation in the laws of Physiology, as understood now-a-days. Refrigerant and sedative,’ according to Trousseau and Pidoux, `chill and depression’ according to Hahnemann, is the foremost effect of Camphor. Now chill in physiological language means, stimulation of a large portion of the vaso-motor nerves, or of the vaso-motor centres, with its consequent contraction of the arteries, diminution of their calibre, and decreased flow of blood through them. This must naturally have a depressing effect upon the organism, although the mischief originates in a nerve- stimulating. The seat of the vaso-motor centres is in the medulla oblongata; and should the excitement, got up there, spread to neighbouring motor centres, as is really sometimes the case with regard to the action of Camphor, then there will simultaneously arise a more or less general muscular excitement, which cannot fail to convey the sensation of a stimulus. Thus it is one and the same drug-action, according as its sphere extends over a small or large region, that may produce along with the chill and depression a feeling of more or less excitement. When the dose is very large, we have seen, that the muscular excitement may amount to tonic or clonic spasms. Hahnemann was right as far as his estimation of facts are concerned. Chill and depression are the primary effects of Camphor, for it is the vaso-motor centres which are first and foremost assailed by the poison. But he was wrong in his interpretation with regard to mixed feeling of depression and stimulation experienced under the influence of the drug. For as has been shown, this mixed feeling is by no means the effect of a series of rapid successions of two opposite drug-impressions, but is simply owing to a physiological state in which both impressions are simultaneously produced.
As to the sensation of external cold, and the burning in the throat and stomach, there can be hardly any dispute, in fact there has never been any, about the fact of their co-existence; but we are no more perplexed at it, knowing as we do that the very retrocession of the blood from the cutaneous surface and its consequent congestion in the digestive organs, are the causes of that simultaneous feeling of heat and cold in two different parts of the body.
I have dwelt on this subject at some length, because it is my full conviction, that Hahnemann’s explanation of the way how Camphor operates upon the healthy human body, has lowered the drug in our estimation as a therapeutic agent. For who, in our school, would ever make use of a drug, of whose pharmacodynamic action he is not sure. If Camphor, after all the proving of it, is still problematic in its action, and, to use a well known attribute, unstable as water; then the less we hear of it the better. Had it not been for cholera, the name of Camphor would have to all appearances been eradicated from our Materia Medica. While lately in France, I have, however, seen the drug used according to Raspael’s system in cases, which have brought home to me the conviction, that we might have deprived in our school more benefit from it than we hitherto did. I have seen a case of spasmodic asthma cured by Camphor (there having been, to my knowledge, no further attacks for four months) where Ipecacuanha did nothing, and where Arsenic seemed only to palliate. In two cases of epilepsy it appeared to me, Camphor did just as well as Cuprum- the one like the other would lengthen the intervals of the attacks, while the drug was used, without arresting the fits altogether. and if you will look at the cases of poisoning quoted at the beginning of this lecture, you will not be surprised at what I say.
Misfortune, says an old proverb, seldom comes alone; something similar prevails with regard to misrepresentation. For Camphor has not only been misrepresented with regard to the modus operandi of its physiological action on the healthy, but no less with regard to the sphere of its therapeutic action in disease. It has been represented as being strictly homoeopathic only to such cases or stages of cholera as are marked by absence of cramps; while its genuine sphere of action embraces the spasmodic variety no less. Need we then wonder at the confusion which reigns in our school with regard to the theory and clinical experience concerning Camphor in cholera? Between Dr. Hampel who could never see what homoeopathic relation there is between the drug and the disease so often mentioned, and Dr. Rubini of Naples, who maintains Camphor to be the specific for cholera, there lies a whole mass of clinical evidence, tending to show, that the truth is with neither of them. The truth is with Homoeopathy when applied in the true spirit of our art. Camphor is eminently homoeopathic to all conditions attend with chill and depression, provided the chill and depression be due to an undue excitement of the vaso-motor centres and not to a beginning failure of the heart’s action; provided further, that the organic mischief, apt to result from such a state, has not taken too large a dimension. Camphor is therefore eminently homoeopathic to a certain variety of cholera, known as cholera sicca, or dry cholera; so called because the disease runs its course without serous transudation, or in other words without vomiting and purging.
Pathologists deny altogether the existence of such a cholera variety; they maintain that rice-water evacuations are pathognomic to cholera; consequently where they are totally absent, it would not be a cholera case we were dealing with at all. It is however a fact, which pathologists cannot and do not deny, that during an epidemic, cases do occur which perfectly correspond to the above description. And although autopsy has in most of these cases shown the existence of a rice-water fluid within the intestines; so that we may fairly say, that the difference between such cases and the ordinary cases of cholera is more apparent than a real: yet for us, homoeopaths, who differentiate, not only between one disease and the other, but between one patient and another, though both may be afflicted with the same pathological disorder-for us, two cholera patients, the one with, the other without, manifest purging and vomiting, are not to all therapeutic intents and purposes the same; and as pathology is after all chiefly cultivated to subserve the art of healing, we shall do well to retain a distinction, which to the pathologists may be apparent, but which is nevertheless real to the therapeutist. The rice-water fluid found within the intestinal canal after death may besides be due to a post mortem effect, liked the shedding of the epithelial cells spoken of in a previous lecture.
In cholera sicca, then, Camphor is eminently useful because eminently homoeopathic to the disease. As already mentioned before, this variety of cholera may be solely attended with chill and depression, without even any, or at least, without any prominent cramps, the whole disorder being restricted to a spasmodic contraction of the small arteries.
Take the following case as reported by Dr. Russell: A child being in a room where there were several bad cases of cholera, suddenly presented the strange, unnatural look, which characterizes the disease, and seemed to shrink in size, becoming cold and a livid hue. This having occurred in the presence of Dr. Russell, he immediately gave her five or six drops of the tincture of Camphor, and in the course of ten minutes, the anxious, frigid expression of face gave way: it was succeeded by a glow of warmth; and the pulse, which has become very small, rapid and irregular, resumed its normal volume and rate. She recovered, but for some days suffered from diarrhoea. Compare now this case with this first case of Camphor poisoning mentioned before concerning a boy of 14, who took about fifteen drops of the so-called homoeopathic Camphor; he immediately became insensible, was soon found pulseless, with cold extremities, face and lips pallid.
Dr. Russell’s case may perhaps not be a fair specimen of cholera sicca; for it might, for all we know, have run on to the second stage of purging and vomiting, had it been allowed to take its course without medical interference;the diarrhoea of which the child suffered after she had recovered from the attack, would rather point to a case of genuine cholera which has been reduced to a common diarrhoea by the use of Camphor. In fact, the above case is rather a fair specimen of a premonitory stage of cholera where there is neither vomiting, nor purging nor cramps. That Camphor helped here promptly,-that the drug was homoeopathic- there can hardly be any doubt.
