dollars the pekul, sent to
Holland, and afterwards refined to the state in which we see it in our
shops, where it is sold at eight to twelve shillings the pound. It
appears however an extraordinary circumstance that any article could
possibly be so adulterated, bearing at the same time the likeness and
retaining the sensible qualities of its original, as that the dealers
should be enabled, with profit to themselves to resell it for the
fiftieth part of the price they gave. But, upon inquiry of an ingenious
person long resident in China, I learned that the Japan camphor is by no
means a factitious substance, but the genuine produce of a tree growing
in abundance in the latter country, different in every character from
that of Sumatra or Borneo, and well known to our botanists by the name of
Laurus camphora, L. He further informed me that the Chinese never mix the
Sumatran camphor with that from Japan, but purchase the former for their
own use, at the before-mentioned extravagant price, from an idea of its
efficacy, probably superstitious, and export the latter as a drug not
held in any particular estimation. Thus we buy the leaves of their
tea-plant at a high rate and neglect herbs, the natives of our own soil,
possessing perhaps equal virtues. It is known also that the Japan
camphor, termed factitious, will evaporate till it wholly disappears, and
at all stages of its diminution retain its full proportion of strength;
which does not seem the property of an adulterated or compounded body.
Kaempfer informs us that it is prepared from a decoction of the wood and
roots of the tree cut into small pieces; and the form of the lumps in
which it is brought to us shows that it has undergone a process. The
Sumatran sort, though doubtless from its extreme volatility it must be
subject to decrease, does not lose any very sensible quantity from being
kept, as I find from the experience of many years that it has been in my
possession. It probably may not be very easy to ascertain its superiority
over the other in the materia medica, not being brought for sale to this
country, nor generally administered; but from a medical person who
practised at Bencoolen I learned that the usual dose he gave was from
half a grain to one or two grains at the most. The oil, although hitherto
of little importance as an article of commerce, is a valuable domestic
medicine, and much used by the natives as well as Europeans in cases of
strains, swellings, an