VEGETABLE KINGDOM. I 59 



healthy person, and would not commend itself to many for 

 this purpose on account of its high price, being wortii its own 

 weight of silver. It is said to have diaphoretic, sedative, 

 stimulant, antispasmodic, arthritic, anthelmintic, and escharotic 

 properties. It is applied as a powder to chancres, buboes, 

 carbuncles, and eczematous sores. It enters into the composition 

 of the better class of dusting powders, so agreeable in prickly- 

 heat and other eruptions. It is also applied to opacities of the 

 cornea, polypus of the nose, ranula, fistula, and to any disease 

 affecting the five senses or any of the apertures of the body. 

 Many of these recommendations are based upon merely theoret- 

 ical grounds. The petty chiefs of Sumatra are said to embalm 

 their dead with this costly substance. 



There is also an oil which exudes from the wood when the 

 tree is felled and split up, and in Sumatra this oil is very 

 cheap. It is not indentical with, and is superior in value 

 to the ordinary Oil of camphor^ which is an uncrystallizable 

 residue exuding from the freshly sublimed laurel camphor to 

 the amount of three or four per cent. It might be suggested 

 that either of these oils, and preferably the former, would 

 make a cheap and excellent embrocation. 



i »u B a o o o fc^ ^" 



