if 



322 The Aborigines of Brazil. 



of the Crax alector. Bernard Gomes recommends a similar 

 application after the reduction of fractures. The fresh juices 

 of many Aroideae, whose powers would be lost by any other 

 mode of exhibition, are especially powerful ; the roots and 

 mucus of various plants, such as Carina glauca, and Alpi- 

 nia pacoseroca, are, when fresh gathered, applied usefully to 

 heal and clean wounds. The root of Piper nodulosum, in 

 taste resembling a pepper-corn, is also chewed to relieve 

 tooth-ache. The fresh expressed juice of the leaf-buds of the 

 Cecropia, which is rich in mucus and in salts, is used as a 

 cooling application in inflammations of the eye, and in erysi- 

 pelas. I have in like manner seen a West Indian cure syphi- 

 litic ulcers of the penis by bathing them in the fluid of an 

 unripe cocoa-nut. Possibly this method may have been in- 

 troduced by the Portuguese. I find that it was in use in the 

 East Indies one hundred and fifty years ago.* (Meister ; 

 Orientalisch-Indianischer Kunst und Lustgartner. Dresden, 

 1642, p. 53.) 



But for internal use the Indians employ only fresh plants. 

 Their store-house is the wood. They are never in the habit 

 of gathering any plant and of drying it for future use. The 

 only vegetable substance that I have seen preserved by them, 

 is the rind of the Strychnos gujanensis and toxifera, whose 

 extract is the chief ingredient in the poison of their arrows. 



Experience has taught even the ignorant Indian, that his 

 remedial plants are not equally efficacious at every season of 

 the year. Thus an Indian declared to me, that the cold in- 

 fusion of the wood of Echites cuarnosi, is only efficacious 

 against gastric fever, when the shrub has passed from the 

 flowering to the seeding period. In lands, in which the plants 

 afford substances of such very different qualities, it becomes a 

 matter of importance to mark the stage of development at 

 which they yield them, and there is a wide field for observation 



* The common sources of information make no mention of this use of it at 

 the present day. — Tr. 



