greatest wealth of ethnobotanical data. With the exception of an 
ethnobotanical index in the Jaramillo Spanish edition of the 
Relacion (see below), these original notes apparently have not 
hitherto been gathered together for publication. 
In 1940, the Field Museum of Natural History published an 
English translation of the Spanish edition of Ruiz’ Relacion 
published by Padre Agustin Jesus Barreiro in 1931. This edi tion 
represents only a part of the Re/acion. 
During the Second World War, whilst he was serving as 
Colombian Ambassador to the Court of St. James, the late Dr. 
Jaime Jaramillo Arango discovered in the British Museum 
(Natural History) the manuscript of the entire Re/acion of Ruiz. 
This complete document was edited by Dr. Jaramillo and 
elegantly published in Spain in 1952. At the request of Dr. 
Jaramillo, I translated the Spanish text into English with his wife, 
Dona Maria José de Jaramillo. Our translation is now ready for 
publication. It is from this original and complete edition that the 
following notes on the ethnopharmacological uses of Peruvian 
and Chilean plants have been culled. 
In view of the current interest in biodynamic plants, I have 
decided in this paper to report only those uses that depend 
apparently on the presence of active secondary organic chemical 
constituents: medicines, poisons, perfumes, dyes, etc. The Rela- 
cion contains many other ethnobotanical references to plants 
valued in construction, as foods, as sources of wood, as material 
for clothing and for other purposes — uses obviously based on 
the carbohydrates, proteins and fats and oils content of the 
plants. 
Ruiz’ ethnobotanical reports should be unusually significant 
and important to modern students. They are the result of direct 
observation in the field; they were gathered by a botanist and are 
based on voucher specimens; they outline plant uses of two 
hundred years ago by natives in a relatively primitive society 
which has long since passed from existence. 
It has seemed most useful to present the following data under 
the plant name used by Ruiz in his Re/acion. I have found that an 
appreciable number of the Latin binomials have apparently 
never been validly published. However, since they have all 
appeared in Jaramillo’s Spanish edition of the Re/acion and since 
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