IQS PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1715. 



magnitude, yet is it very regular in its returns, as we found in the year 1714. 

 Since then, we have watched, as the absence of the moon and the clearness of 

 weather would permit, to observe the first beginning of its appearance in a six- 

 foot tube, which bearing a very great aperture discovers most minute stars. 

 And on June 15 last, it was first perceived like one of the very least teles- 

 copical stars : but in the rest of that month and July it gradually increased, so 

 as to become in August visible to the naked eye; and so it continued all the 

 month of September. After that it again died away by degrees, and on the 

 8th of December at night it was scarcely discernible by the tube, and as near 

 as could be guessed, equal to what it was at its first appearance on June 15th: 

 so that this year it has been seen in all near 6 months, which is but little less 

 than half its period: and the middle, and consequently the greatest brightness, 

 falls about the 1 0th of September. Those that please to seek for it, may expect 

 its first appearance in July next, and find it in Q^ 6° 30' circiter a 1"'* >{«: X, 

 with lat. bor. 52° 40'. 



Botanicum Hortense If^\ continued from N° 345. By James Pe livery F.R.S, 



N° 34(>, p. 353. Sect. II. 



i. 

 An Account of the Pareira Brava. By Dr. Helvetius* N° 346, p. 365. 



This letter gives an account of the supposed medicinal virtues of the pareira 

 brava, a root brought from the Brazils, with the manner of taking it. As 

 this drug has long since lost its reputation for curing or relieving nephritic 

 and calculous affections, it is deemed unnecessary to reprint this commendatory 

 account of it. 



* This physician, Adrian Helvetius, was a native of Holland, but he settled at Paris, where 

 after some time he excited the attention of the public by a new and successful method of treating 

 the dysentery by a remedy which he at first kept a secret, but of which he afterwards published a 

 circumstantial account (see Vol. iv. p. 237> of these Abridgments), on receiving a premium (after 

 the efficacy of the remedy had been sufficiently proved by repeated trials at the Hotel-Dieu) of 

 1000 louis d'or from the French king Lewis XIV. He was moreover appointed physician to the 

 Duke of Orleans, and inspector general of the Military Hospitals. He died in 1727. From the 

 above account of the Pareira Brava, as well as from his Traite des Maladies les plus frequentes 

 et des Remcdes specifiques, it appears that he was much addicted to empiricism, and that he 

 ascribed to many drugs a degree of medicinal power far exceeding that which they really possess. 

 His son John Claude Adrian Helvetius was likewise a physician, and was honored with the favor of 

 the Court. He was member of several learned academies, and wrote a treatise in French on the 

 Animal CEconomy; and died in 1735. He was father to the metaphysical Helvetius, author of the 

 celebrated treatise de I'Esprit, of another work de I'Homme, and of a poem entitled le Bonheur, 

 xiow very little read. 



