PAREIRA BRAVA. 383 



the root of the plant at all resembles any of the forms of that 1873. 

 drug I had ever met with in commerce. 



What then is true Pareira Brava ? To answer this question 

 we must look back to the early history of the drug. 



The merit of having first given some account of Pareira 

 Brava is usually conceded to the Dutch traveller Piso, who in piso the 

 his work De Medicina Brasiliensi, published in 1648, described veller. 

 a plant called by the Portuguese Caapeba Cip6 de Cobras or 

 Herva de Nossa Senhora. Piso's figure is scarcely recognizable, 

 but his description of the fruit as resembling the catkins of hop 

 (semen magnum coloris rosacei, e capsulis lupulo similibus pro- 

 minens) applies well enough to a Cissampelos, and in fact G. gla- 

 berrima, St. Hil., is known under these Portuguese names in 

 Southern Brazil at the present time. My friend Mr. J. Correa 

 de Mello, of Campinas, Prov. S. Paulo, has been good enough to 

 send me a specimen of this plant and of its root ; and the 

 latter I find to be wholly unlike any sort of Pareira Brava. 



That Piso does not mention Pareira Brava was indeed re- 

 marked as long ago as 1710 ; 1 and it is only since the drug has 

 been supposed to be derived from Cissampelos that authors have 

 identified it with Piso's Caapeba. 



Pareira Brava was certainly first brought to Europe by the Introdxictiou 

 Portuguese. It first attracted general attention in 1688, when into Eur P e - 

 Michel Arnelot, Marquis de Gournay, a privy councillor of 

 Louis XIV., and a very distinguished political personage, brought 

 it with him from Lisbon whither he had been sent as ambas- 

 sador by the French king. There can be no doubt that the drug 

 was considered to possess extraordinary properties. EcuiHe*, the 

 successor of Amelot in the Lisbon embassy, also took home with 

 him to Paris some Pareira Brava; andin 1710 we find it claiming the 

 notice of the French Academy, 2 who requested Etienne-Fran9ois 

 Geoffroy, Professor of Medicine and Pharmacy in the College of 

 France, to investigate its virtues. Jean- Claude- A drien Helve- 

 tius, a physician of great merit, who though a young man was 

 consulted by Louis XIV., in his last days, and was afterwards 



1 Hist, de I'Acad, Royale des Sciences, annee 1710, 56. 

 3 Ibid. 



