214 
CAMPHOR. 
number of doses, enveloped in a wrapper describing the qualities of 
the medicine and the mode of administering it. Of the gums I could 
only make out the camphor. This substance, as exposed for sale at 
Canton, was in very small fragments about the size of a pea, and 
seemed to have been picked out from the interior of the plant, and 
no doubt came from Borneo or Sumatra. * It is not f procured 
from the same plant as the Chinese camphor, and, there is some 
reason to believe, is of a more volatile nature, and possesses more 
powerful properties. The Chinese physicians are so persuaded of 
this, that although the most ordinary kind costs them four hundred 
taels, or upwards of one hundred and thirty pounds the piccul, 
they prescribe it in preference to their own, the best of which is 
exported for twenty -eight taels, or less than ten pounds the piccul. 
The Chinese employ camphor largely in a great number of dis- 
eases, and to free themselves from vermin, to which 1 but too well 
know, from my own experience, that the Chinese are remarkably 
subject. A very common amusement amongst our boatmen was in 
searching for them in their clothes, and cracking them between 
their teeth. 
No opium is exposed for sale in the shops, probably because it is 
a contraband article, but it is used with tobacco in all parts of the 
empire. The Chinese indeed consider the smoking of opium as one 
* The plant whence the Borneo or Sumatra camphor is procured has been described 
and figured in the twelfth volume of the Asiatic Transactions, by Mr. H. T. Colebroke, 
under the name of Dryabalanops Caviphora. 
t The mode of procuring the Borneo camphor is thus related by Mr. Marsden. “ The 
tree, when cut down, is divided transversely into several blocks, and these again are split 
with wedges into small pieces, from the interstices of which the camphor, if any there be, 
is extracted. That which comes away readily in large flakes, almost transparent, is 
esteemed the prime sort or head; the smaller clean pieces are considered as belly; and 
the minute particles, chiefly scraped from the wood and often mixed with it, are called 
foot, according to the customary terms adopted in the assortment of drugs. The mode of 
separating it from these and other impurities, is by steeping and washing it in water, and 
sometimes with the aid of soap.” History of Sumatra, p. 150 . 
