The Aborigines of Brazil. 321 



all which Jesuits have in former centuries ascribed to it great 

 efficacy. Pumice, which sometimes floats down the rivers 

 from the Peruvian frontier, is on account of this strange pro- 

 perty, prized and used as an amulet. Of other minerals employ- 

 ed as medicines, the Indian is acquainted only with salt and 

 lithomarge ; both are used in complaints of the abdomen. 

 He has no idea however of preparing them by any chemical 

 process. He does not even know how to separate potash 

 from the ashes of the wood which he burns. Thus the low 

 state of Indian medicine is abundantly proved by the absence 

 of any one chemical substance in his materia medica. 



Articles from the Vegetable kingdom. 



The remedies used by the Pajes are chiefly gathered fresh 

 from the tree or shrub, and applied in the form of infusions 

 or of decoction internally, and of cataplasms and washes ex- 

 ternally. He does not think of more recondite preparations. 

 Their plants thus applied have often the most powerful effects, 

 and are frequently substituted with advantage for the chemical 

 preparations of Europe. These superficial applications amply 

 deserve the attention of rational medicine. The effects of 

 fomentations with fresh leaves on bad ulcers, which I some- 

 times witnessed, were so rapid and powerful as to border on 

 the wonderful. Thus the sores on the feet of a negro of my 

 party, which I had for months been trying in vain to cure, 

 were healed by a mess of fresh squeezed leaves of Julocroton 

 phagedaenicus, one of the Euphorbiaceae, I saw equally favor- 

 able results follow the application of poultices of Euphorbia 

 cotinifolia to large warts, and of the fomentation made of the 

 squeezed flowers of the water-plant Pistia occidentalis to 

 the old ulcers of a boy. Poultices of the American cotton 

 plant also often heal old unhealthy ulcers with wonderful 

 quickness. In fractures of the extremities the Indians on the 

 Rio Doce use the squeezed plant of the Tillandsia recurvata, 

 which is made into a poultice with the half-hatched eggs 



