CAMPHIRE
—is a vegetable concrete, unctuous to the touch, with a fragrant smell, somewhat like that of rosemary, and a bitter pungent taste, accompanied with a sense of coolness on the tongue. It is volatile, like essential oils, but without their acrimony: it burns in water; it receives no empyreumatic impressions; nor does it suffer any resolution from any degree of fire, to which it can be exposed in close vessels, though readily combustible in the open air. Camphire is known to be good, if, when it is put upon hot bread, it becomes moist; if dry, it is bad. It should be kept in a glass stopper bottle, or close tied in a bladder, not more to prevent it from losing its property, than to prevent the loss of the whole by exhalation. Used as a medicine, internally or externally, it has a narcotic effect, and greatly diminishes the irritability of the system; as an external, it is singularly useful, particularly in weakness, rheumatic pains, or spasmodic affections.