THE 



CALCUTTA JOURNAL 



OF 



NATURAL HISTORY. 



The Natural History, the Diseases, the Medical Practice, 

 and the Materia Medica of the Aborigines of Brazil, by 

 Dr. Von Martius. Translated by John Macpherson, 

 Esq., Assistant Surgeon. 



Part I. — Natural History of the Aborigines of Brazil. 



INTRODUCTION. 



Although many travellers have written accounts of the 

 physical constitution of the aboriginal American, and of the 

 diseases dependent on k, yet the subject does not appear by 

 any means to be exhausted. Indeed, it requires the critical 

 attention of philosophical enquirers on that very account, for 

 many erroneous views have been given forth, and been handed 

 down traditionally from the time of the first discovery of 

 the new world. It was in the spirit of that century, and it 

 was the interest of those discoverers, to represent many 

 things in the physical constitution of the inhabitants of the 

 newly-found continent as strange and wonderful, and differing 

 from the type of mankind previously known. 



To this we may add, that the earliest describers of the 

 new world, chiefly Spaniards and Portuguese, wrote ac- 



VOL. VI. NO. XXI. APRIL, 1845. B 



