46 



ON THE ANTIDOTE CACOON (FEUILLCEA CORDIFOLIA) 

 —NATURAL ORDER CUCURBIT ACECE, OR CUCUMBER 

 ALLIANCE. 



[Named in honour of Lewis Feuillee, a French Physician-Monk, who travelled 



in Peru.] 



The antidote cacoon is a scandent plant (perennial), climbling on the 

 highest trees, and very common here (Jamaica). The pericarp re- 

 sembles a small calabash packed singularly, with seeds eight to twelve 

 in number ; albuminse very oily and bitter, used by negroes as an anti- 

 dote for poisonous stings and foul ulcers, &c. I have used it with good 

 effect to cattle suspected of having eaten a poisonous herb. 



Long, p. 718, says the seeds are extremely bitter, and when grated 

 and infused in rum or other spirits, a small dose opens the body and 

 produces an appetite. The infusion is also made in Madeira wine, and 

 taken to relieve pains in the stomach. The oil gives a clear, fine light 

 wdien burnt in lamps, and emits no disagreeable smell. 



Dancer says the kernel sliced and infused with orange-peel and a 

 little wild cinnamon (Canella alba) in rum, forms an excellent bitter and 

 opening medicine ; infused in water and rum, good in all cold poisons. 



Piso says that he has seen whole families in Brazil that have had 

 violent aches and pains, got by the night air, w T ho have been cured with 

 the oil of these nuts, which they may easily have growing in great 

 plenty in most parts of America. It cannot be used in victuals, being 

 so excessively bitter. 



Barham remarks — " A Erench gentleman some years past brought 

 me from Peru some of these nuts, and asked me if I knew what they 

 were. I did not satisfy him whether I knew them, but asked him what 

 the Spaniards called them, and what use they put them to. He told me 

 the Spaniards called them Avilla, and that they were worth their weight 

 in gold to expel poison, and wished I could find them growing in 

 Jamaica, which they do in great plenty, and the negroes I employed to 

 get them for me called them sabo (p. 113). 



These seeds are said to be good for a person going into a dropsy, or a 

 swelling of the face and feet, &c, and the following is the receipt : — 

 Take eight ot ten of the kernels, scrape and bruise them fine in a mortar ; 

 put the same into a bottle, pouring thereon a pint of old rum or brandy 

 and the like quantity of water ; let it remain in the bottle two or three 

 days, shaking the bottle frequently. Take a wineglassful every morning 

 fasting, and use moderate exercise before breakfast. 



An anonymous writer in the ' Columbian Magazine' for July, 1798, 

 who gives the foregoing receipt, states that " a young girl had been pro- 

 nounced by the medical gentlemen in Spanish-town in a dropsical state, 

 and everything administered as they thought necessary in such a case, 



