384 



PAREIRA BRAVA. 



1873. 



Sir Hans 

 Sloane. 



Helvetius. 



Petirer. 



attached to the. court of Louis XV., tried the new drug still 

 earlier, 1 aud gave strong testimony in its favour. 



Both Geoffroy and Helvetius were correspondents of Sir Hans 

 Sloane, that diligent promoter of science, whose immense col- 

 lections gave origin to the British Museum, and among the 

 Sloanian MSS. I have found a letter of Helvetius's 2 addressed 

 in 1715 to Monsieur Duyvenvoorde, ambassador from the States 

 General to George I., a portion of which I will here quote : 



" I am extreamly pleased s r that you have apply 'd yorself to 

 me for my advice about the use of the Pareira brava which has 

 been recomended to you, because I can give you a very good 

 account of it haveing been one of the first that introduced it in 

 France. I have made abundance of lucky experiments about it 

 which have made this medicine very well known to me, where- 

 fore I assure you, you can do nothing better than to make 

 tryall of it. . . The Pareira Brava is a root which comes to us 

 from Brazil by the way of Lisbon, but which the war has 

 rendred pretty scarce ; however it is to be found among the 

 good druggists and is sold [at] Paris for 40 livres the pound. 

 Tis called in Brazill the Universall Medicine, and made use of 

 there in all kinds of distempers. A Capuchin monk who came 

 from thence told me he could not give it a greater character 

 than by assuring me that in all their voyages they carried the 

 gospell in one pockett and the Pareira Brava in another. ..." 



Helvetius recommended the finely-powdered root in five grain 

 doses, to be taken in infusion warm like tea. 



Petiver, apothecary of London, and secretary to the Eoyal 

 Society, an active collector of objects of natural history of every 

 kind, whose letters are also in the Sloanian collection, thus 

 wrote, December, llth, 1716, to Colonel Worsley, His Majesty's 

 envoy at Lisbon : 



"... I am glad to hear y e Brasil ffleet is safely arrived, w ch 

 I hope has brought some materialls for my succeeding Collec- 

 taneas, and amongst them nothing can be more welcome than 

 specimens of y c leaves and fruit of y e Ipecacuanha, Pareira 



1 Helvetins, Traitt des Maladies les plus Fre'qiwntes et des Remedes speci- 

 fiqw* pour les Guerir, Paris, 1703, 98. 



8 Sloane MS., No. 3340, p. 291. The letter has already been published in 

 Phil. Trans., No. 346, Nov. and Dec., 1715, p. 363. 



