52 SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. LEGUMINOS&, 
sedative and hypnotic, and has been found effective in producing sleep without subsequent injurious 
effects, although inferior to opium as an analgesic. The fluid extract of the bark of the root locally 
applied has been successfully employed in alleviating toothache, or, taken internally, in relieving pain. 
The bark of the roots, with the young branches and powdered leaves, has been used in the West Indies 
from the time of the Caribs to stupefy fish and facilitate their capture.” 
The generic name, formed from iy6vs and wéOy, indicates the Carib use of the tree. The genus is 
represented by a single species. 
1 Barham, Hort. Amer. 52.— Lindley, Fl. Med. 246. — William 
Hamilton, Pharm. Jour. iv. 76.— U. S. Dispens. ed. 14, 1734. — 
The Pharmacology of the Newer Materia Medica, 1890, 593, f. 
2 The earlier European travelers in the Antilles and South 
America describe the employment by the natives of Ichthyomethia 
The first men- 
tion of the custom appears in Oviedo y Valdes’s Historia Natural y 
and some allied leguminous trees for this purpose. 
General de las Indias, published in 1535, in which this passage 
occurs : — 
“Y tambien usan de cierta hierva que se dice baygua, en lugar 
de belesa 6 barbasco: . . . Esta baygua es como bexuco, é picada 
é maxada aprovecha para embarbascar 6 adormecer el pescado, 
como he dicho.” (Lib. xiii. cap. i.) 
It is probably the Bois a Ennyurer les Poissons of Du Tertre 
(Hist. Gen. des Iles de Saint Christophe, etc., 216) and of Labat 
(Nouveau Voyage aux Isles de l’Amérique, i. 418). 
Rochefort speaks of it as “celuy dont la racine étant broyée, & 
jettée dans les rivieres, enyure les Poissons.” (Histoire Naturelle 
et Morale des Isles Antilles, 103.) 
