snake-bite. This same use prevails also in Amazonian Peru and 
Brazil. 
Although the plant has a wide reputation as a treatment for 
snake-bite, the Indians of the Vaupés in Colombia appear to 
value it primarily in infusion as an emetic to be used in cases of 
food poisoning, frequent during tribal festivals. The Bora In- 
dians in Peru take the leaves finely chopped in water ‘‘to calm 
the body and eliminate pain’’, not only in the case of snake- 
bite, but for the stings of the tail of the fresh water skate (raya) 
and of large, poisonous ants (isula). 
It is difficult to understand the paucity of chemical investiga- 
tion of a plant ethnopharmacologically so important over so 
wide an area. Fresh material (Plowman, Schultes et Tovar 
6803) was chemically examined on the Alpha-Helix Amazon 
Expedition 1976-1977: *‘Only squalene and methyl esters of 
fatty acids were found . . . No alkaloids were present’’. Squa- 
lene is widely distributed in plants, known from 14 families of 
higher plants and from yeasts. 
Known as femblador in Venezuela, an infusion of the bark is 
employed as a laxative (L. Williams 14352). In the western 
Amazon of Brazil, where the plant is called anabi and pao de 
cobra (‘snake plant’’), Potalia Amara is recognized as toxic. 
The leaves and shoots are made into a bitter infusion employed 
in treating syphilis, and a decoction of the leaves is used as a 
wash for eye infections. A tea of the leaves is emetic in large 
doses and is taken to empty the stomach of tainted cassava 
flour. Folk medicine in Brazil maintains that the root is valu- 
able in treating snake-bite (Le Cointe, P.: Amazonia Brasileira 
3 (1943) 20. 
In Peru, Potalia Amara is known as sacha-mangua (L. 
Williams in Field Mus. Nat. Hist. Bot. Ser. 15 (1936) 418), 
curarina and curarina-sacha (‘curanina’’ is a name widely 
employed in Hispanic America for snake-bite potions). The 
most widely known term for the plant in Colombia is mar- 
tiguaje. One of the Brazilian names, pao de cobra, referes to 
the widespread esteem that the plant enjoys as an antidote for 
snake venom. 
It would appear that a plant of such varied therapeutic uses 
should be the subject of intense phytochemical study. 
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