uot 
mme 
(0 Ste of the Equator, i Mone 
Colonel Hall's Journal. See pp. 67, and 70, of 
ON THE MEDICINAL PLANT, CALLED CUICHUNCHULLI. 
have afforded great benefit in the disorder 
there usually called Mal de San Lazaro, 
and here Cocobay, and even to have effected 
its cure. As this is one of the most deplo- 
table diseases that can affect the human 
frame, I am persuaded that no apology will 
be requisite for bringing forward some au- 
thentic reports on the subject, together 
with such additional information, concern- 
ing both the plant itself, whose Botanical 
characters I have been able to ascertain, 
and its properties, as it has been in my 
power to collect from different quarters, or 
‘by personal observation. 
“Tt appears that a Jesuit of Quito, 
named Velasco, a native of Riobamba, in 
' that province, whence he was afterwards 
expelled with the rest of his brethren, and 
permitted to retire into Italy, had occupied 
himself with writing a history of Quito, 
which the unremitting persecution kept up 
against the whole Order, finally deterred 
him from making public. At his death, 
the work fell into the hands of his executor, 
another Jesuit, whence it passed into those 
of Don Modesto Larrea,! a Colombian, who 
chanced to be in Italy, and who carried it 
back with himito Quito." The following 
passage relates to the plant now under con- 
sideration :— 
* Cuichunchulli, a name signifying in 
the language of the Incas, bowels of a 
Guinea Pig, 7ripa de Cuy, resembles a 
small, whitish, slender nerve, “destitute of 
leaf, which rises from beneath stones, and 
fastens itself to their surface. Scarcely any 
plant is more potent. Its virtues, though 
long familiar to"the Indians, were unknown 
to the Spaniards, till 1754, when an Indian 
revealed them as a singular favor to a lay 
Jesuit, then suffering under confirmed 
Leprosy ( Elephantiasis tuberculata,) with 
all the sympt 1 f a Lazar, 
3 
and pronounced inea hopeless state by the 
Physicians. He gave him half a drachm 
of the nerve-like filament, ground 
mixed with wine, but warned him, first to 
* This gentleman, afterwards Vice President of the 
* present vol. of this Work. 
279 
receive the Sacraments. Its operation was 
attended with extreme agony during twen- 
ty-four hours, when the surface of his body 
became clean and dry. A few days after, 
he began to cast his skin piecemeal, and 
and recovered perfectly. Of all which, 
says Velasco, “ I was an eye-witness in 
the city of Cuenca.’ ” 
** The above statement having been ex- 
tracted, and published by a Newspaper 
printed at Bogota, in 1829, it came to the 
knowledge of a practitioner at Maracaybo, 
Senor Manuel de Arocha, whose desire to 
make trial of the Cuichunchulli induced 
him to beg the assistance of many friends to 
procure it for him; in which he succeeded, 
in consequence of accidentally applying 
to a Colonel Casanova, one of whose own 
relatives was afflicted with this disease, the 
Mal de San Lazaro. Immediately on re- 
ceiving the Cuichunchulli, Señor de Aroche 
commenced by trying it on a person of co- 
lour, named Puche, long and dreadfully 
afflicted with this disorder, and afterwards 
administered it to Don Angel Casanova, 
keeping an accurate and detailed journal of 
the principal occurrences which he ob- 
served in each case. An authentic copy 
of this document, drawn up and signed by 
this practitioner, is now before me, from 
which it appears that in both instances the 
exhibition of the remedy was discontinued 
from the whole stock having been expend- 
ed, a portion having been generously spared 
by Sefior de Casanova to a young lady, 
named Maria Antonio Macpherson, living 
in Caracas, and similarly affected with the 
Mal de San Lazaro. In all these in- 
stances, though the trial of the Cuichun- 
chulli was cut short from the insufficiency 
of the supply, the effects were more or less 
beneficial, and highly so, both as regarded 
Puche, and Miss Macpherson. That they, 
however, fell so far short of the extraordi- 
nary cure performed in the case of the 
Jesuit, may be partly accounted for by the 
circunistance that possibly the plant used 
by the latter might not be exactly identical 
with the Cuichunchull. Velasco could 
have | d no great knowledge of 
[ ; else he would at once have per- 
