A Treatise on Therapeutics, and Pharmacology or Materia Medica; Or Materia Medica

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1856. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... produced. Thus far the medicine operates in exact accordance with the class of nervous stimulants. A larger dose will occasion decided narcotic symptoms. With or without preliminary excitement of the circulation, there will now be a feeling of giddiness, perhaps also of languor or lassitude, with more or less mental confusion or unsteadiness; and, if the impression is very decided, there may also be some disorder in vision and hearing. These symptoms are soon followed by heaviness, mental hebetude, and a disposition to sleep; during which the general sensibility is impaired, the pulse, whetheT at first excjted or not, usually becomes slower, though perhaps still full, and the temperature of the surface is somewhat lowered. Very opposite statements have been made, in reference to the effects of the medicine upon the urinary and genital organs, by persons who equally speak from their own experience, and, so far as can be determined, are equally deserving of confidence. While, according to one statement, camphor is apt to irritate the urinary passages and the organs of generation, producing even strangury in the one, and sensations of voluptuous excitement in reference to the other, the opposite statement affirms that the medicine, instead of causing, is admirably adapted to relieve strangury, and is a powerful antaphrodisiac, producing excellent effects in priapism, nymphomania, a disposition to onanism, &c. Now these assertions are not so contradictory as they seem. Allowing the camphor to act upon the nervous centres as a stimulant, the first stage of its action may be an excitation of the function over which the centres respectively preside, while, in the second stage, ftie congestion of the centre shall be such as to impair its power, and consequently depress ...