DE PLANTIS TOXICARIIS EF MUNDO 
NOVO TROPICALE COMMENTATIONES XIII 
NOTES ON POISONOUS OR MEDICINAL MALPIGHIACEOUS 
SPECIES OF THE AMAZON 
BY 
Ricuarp Evans ScCHULTES 
This paper is offered in continuation of a series pre- 
senting ethnopharmacological observations made in the 
northwest Amazon. The malpighiaceous species enumer- 
ated in the following pages—all apparently unstudied 
from the phytochemical and pharmacological points of 
view—have been found to have interesting applications 
amongst the Indians of the region. 
The identifications of the voucher specimens were 
made by Dr. José Cuatrecasas of the Smithsonian In- 
stitution and are cited and described in his monograph 
of Colombian Malpighiaceae which appeared in Webbia 
13 (1958) 843-664. The drawings herein produced were 
prepared by Mr. Joshua B. Clark. 
The ethnopharmacological observations were made by 
the writer in the Amazonian basin of Colombia between 
1941 and 1954. They are offered in the hope of stimu- 
lating research to discover new biodynamic principles or 
to find new potentially valuable medicinal plants. Re- 
search along these lines is especially needed for this family 
of 60 genera and more than 880 species which has re- 
cently been described as ‘‘scarcely touched, chemotaxo- 
[121 J 
