CAMPHORA


CAMPHORA symptoms of the homeopathy remedy from Homeopathic Drug Pictures by M.L. Tyler. What are the symptoms of CAMPHORA? Keynote indications and personality traits of CAMPHORA…


Introduction

      Camphor is another medicine that should be in very hours 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 it is 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 whiskey with a lump of camphor at the bottom, ready for sudden severe chills and for diarrhoea. 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.

Poisoning 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, “through 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 restore.” 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 for 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. Floorings: then “cardiac set in “, as she expressed it. Then influenza-three 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.

She took Camphor-eight drops of the spirit of camphor in water as often as from seven tonight times a day. Had done so far 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 Lycopodium30, 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 Lycopodium but her nights were still every 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 Phosphorus 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 feeling 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 has 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 be 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 the uncovered, wants cold air, wants the windows open; but before all this can be done a flash of heat comes on and wants hot bottles; but thus 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 reputed exhaustion of its action and the quick change of its symptoms render it incapable of curing most chronic disease.”

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.

Contractions 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 feelings as if cold air was blowing on covered parts; great sinking and collapse. (Cholera).

Burning duration urination.

Newborn children; asphyxia;hard places in skin on abdomen and things, quickly increasing and getting harder, sometimes with a deep redness spreading nearly over whole abdomen and thighs; violent fever, with startings and tetanic spasms, with bendings 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 sequela 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;cold 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;diarrhoea pulse feeble, nervous anxiety and stupefaction;singing respiration; great exhaustion.

In the cholera epidemic of 1931 Hahnemann faced the problem, How it was to be met; land wrote papers, widely distributed, on its treatment. He had followers, evening 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.”

Margaret Lucy Tyler
Margaret Lucy Tyler, 1875 – 1943, was an English homeopath who was a student of James Tyler Kent. She qualified in medicine in 1903 at the age of 44 and served on the staff of the London Homeopathic Hospital until her death forty years later. Margaret Tyler became one of the most influential homeopaths of all time. Margaret Tyler wrote - How Not to Practice Homeopathy, Homeopathic Drug Pictures, Repertorising with Sir John Weir, Pointers to some Hayfever remedies, Pointers to Common Remedies.