Camphor flavoured Tang ice cream, made early plastics and sparked a bombardment
A waxy crystal distilled from Asian laurel wood, camphor has perfumed Arab courts, flavoured one of the earliest recorded ice creams, embalmed Egyptian mummies and served as the key ingredient that turned nitrocellulose into celluloid. In 1868, British warships even shelled a Taiwanese port to break China's monopoly on it.
Most natural camphor comes from the camphor laurel of East Asia and the kapur tree of Southeast Asia, though rosemary leaves hold a trace. Its name travelled through Arabic kafur and Sanskrit, possibly back to a Malay word for chalk; Old Malay called it the chalk of Barus, after a Sumatran port that exported it. For centuries producers roasted wood chips and condensed the vapour, later passing steam through crushed wood. By the early nineteenth century most big stands of trees were gone except in Japan and Taiwan, and Taiwanese output far outstripped Japan's.
That scarcity made camphor a prize. China, then Japan, ran monopolies on the Taiwanese supply, and when a Chinese official refused British demands in 1868, the Royal Navy bombarded Anping and seized the harbour. Demand exploded with the early plastics industry, which used huge quantities to plasticise celluloid. Japan tried to corner the market in 1907 and 1908, but chemist Gustav Komppa's laboratory synthesis spurred industrial chemists, and synthetic camphor reached world markets within about two years. When the First World War pushed prices from around 50 cents a pound to $3.75, DuPont made its own from pine turpentine.
Its cultural uses are remarkably wide. The Chinese prized the best grade as dragon's brain perfume, a Tang recipe added it to ice cream, and medieval Arabic cookbooks used it in sweet and savoury dishes; South Indian desserts such as payasam still use edible camphor. Hindu worshippers burn it during aarti, and the Quran names it as the scent of wine in paradise. Marksmen use its soot to blacken rifle sights, and blocks placed in toolboxes leave an oily film that slows rust.
On skin it stimulates nerve endings sensitive to heat and cold, which is why rubs feel warm or cool, though evidence that inhaled camphor eases colds is disputed. Swallowed, it is poisonous: around two grams causes serious toxicity and four grams can kill.
Source: Camphor
