Note {3} — Chapter XI

Note 3.—The Camphor called Fansúrí is celebrated by Arab writers at least as old as the 9th century, e.g., by the author of the first part of the Relations, by Mas’udi in the next century, also by Avicenna, by Abulfeda, by Kazwini, and by Abu’l Fazl, etc. In the second and third the name is miswritten Ḳansúr, and by the last Ḳaisúri, but there can be no doubt of the correction required. (Reinaud, I. 7; Mas. I. 338; Liber Canonis, Ven. 1544, I. 116; Büsching, IV. 277; Gildem. p. 209; Ain-i-Akb. p. 78.) In Serapion we find the same camphor described as that of Pansor; and when, leaving Arab authorities and the earlier Middle Ages we come to Garcias, he speaks of the same article under the name of camphor of Barros. And this is the name—Kápúr Bárús—derived from the port which has been the chief shipping-place of Sumatran camphor for at least three centuries, by which the native camphor is still known in Eastern trade, as distinguished from the Kápúr Chíná or Kápúr-Japún, as the Malays term the article derived in those countries by distillation from the Laurus Camphora. The earliest western mention of camphor is in the same prescription by the physician Aëtius (circa A.D. 540) that contains one of the earliest mentions of musk. (Supra, I. p. 279.) The prescription ends: “and if you have a supply of camphor add two ounces of that.” (Aetii Medici Graeci Tetrabiblos, etc., Froben, 1549, p. 910.)