PHARMACOPCEIAL VEGETABLE DRUGS. 
necessary. It may be briefly stated that this insidiously active drug 
came to the attention of the profession of medicine through its well- 
known qualities, as established by the people of its native land. Much 
the writer recorded concerning opium and its culture as noted in his 
travels in Turkey, is to be found in Lloyd Brothers’ Drug Treatise 
No. XXII, “Opium and Its Compounds.” 
PAREIRA 
Pareira brava (Chondrodendron tomentosum) is a climbing 
shrub, native to Peru and Brazil, and adjacent sections of South 
America. The Portuguese missionaries of the seventeenth century 
who visited Brazil learned of its reputed qualities from the natives, 
who under the name abutua or butua valued it highly for its thera- 
peutic virtues. The Portuguese gave it the name Pareira brava, or 
wild vine, with reference to its mode of growth. Its reputed medicinal 
qualities, learned from the natives, were made conspicuous by Michel 
Amelot, ambassador of Louis XIV to Lisbon, who found it in that 
city and carried it with him to Paris. The botanist Pomet (519), 
1694, described the plant in his “History of Drugs,” Paris. After an 
eventful botanical record embracing considerable discussion as well 
as confusion with some other drugs, during which Pareira brava en- 
joyed professional conspicuity in Europe, it dropped from general 
use, the extraordinary pretensions long made for it being now prac- 
tically forgotten. 
PEPO 
The seed of the pumpkin, Cucurbita pepo, in the form of an in- 
fusion as well as in a pulpy mass, has been long a favorite home 
remedy for intestinal parasites, which use introduced it to the medical 
profession. Although the medical profession has used pumpkin seed 
somewhat in this direction, as a rule they now prefer other remedial 
agents, santonin being employed for round worms and pomegranate 
bark for tape worms. 
PHYSOSTIGMA 
Physostigma, Calabar bean (Physostigma venenosum), is the 
fruit of an African vine growing near the mouths of the Niger and 
the Old Calabar Rivers, Guinea, where it furnished one of the ordeal 
tests of the pagan tribes of tropical Western Africa. The seed is 
therefore known as the “Ordeal Bean,” and was administered in the 
form of either an emulsion or infusion, as the case might be. It was 
introduced to England by Dr. F. W. Daniel (182), about 1840, its 
method of use being again mentioned by him in a paper read before 
the Ethnological Society, 1846. Professor Balfour (36), of Edin- 
burgh, obtained the plant from the Rev. W. C. Thompson, a missionary 
to the west coast of Africa, and described it in a paper read before 
the Royal Society of Edinburgh, including it also in his “History of 
Plants.” Its power of contracting the pupil of the eye was discovered 
by Dr. T. R. Fraser (246) of Edinburgh. Its power of paralyzing the 
; be 
