It's make-up is simple and cheap. The camphor is from the tree, and the phenol is a byproduct of coal gas production, virtually a throwaway. Both these are very light liquids, which allows the antiseptic to penetrate deep into places the ointment types won't go. The stuff is wonderful, but there is a problem, and that is Bayer Corp.
Not only am I down on Bayer for continuing to advertise and try to sell aspirin for children after the govt. forced them to put the Reyes disease warning on their labels, but starting about two years ago when they took over Campho Phenique they have been slowly replacing the liquid on store shelves with the new gel version. Why? Money! They make about 8 times as much on the tiny little gel tubes over the much larger liquid bottles. That's a huge price increase that I don't feel is at all warranted because the ingredients are so cheap..spelling G r e e d !
Tips for consumers:
When I could no longer find Campho Phenique in stores, and you can't find the 2oz bottles at all anymore, I went online and bought a case..36 bottles (from Hills Trading) of the .75oz size for the same $ as 14 of the new .23oz tubes of gel. That's 22 more, and all of them are 3录 times bigger.. 27oz against 3.2oz of the gel for the same money. You can see why they want to phase it out, but worse..the gel is the same liquid only thinned (or rather thickened) with some petroleum jelly (Vaseline), making it far less effective in my opinion, and that's on Top of the much smaller quantity.