430 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
a strong inspiration. M. Maugin thus describes 
its effects on an Indian whom he saw take it. 
"His eyes started from his head, his mouth con- 
tracted, his hmbs trembled. It was fearful to see 
him. He was obliged to sit down or he would 
have fallen. He was drunk, but only for about 
five minutes ; he was then gayer." 
" Medicine- Men " and their Customs 
Among the native tribes of the Uaupes and of 
the upper tributaries of the Orinoco, niopo or 
parica is the chief curative agent. When the paye 
is called in to treat a patient, he first snuffs up his 
nose such a quantity of parica as suffices to throw 
him into a sort of ecstasy, wherein he professes to 
divine the nature of the evil wish which has caused 
the sickness, and to gather force to counteract it. 
He next lights a very thick cigar of tobacco, in- 
hales a quantity of smoke, and puffs it out over the 
sick man, over the hammock in which he is laid, 
and over everything he habitually uses, but espe- 
cially over the food he is to eat. This done, the 
paye professes to suck out the ill, by applying his 
mouth to the seat of pain, or as near to it as 
practicable ; and he spits out the morbid matter — 
most likely tobacco or coca juice — and sometimes 
produces from his mouth thorns and other sub- 
stances, previously hidden there, but which he 
pretends to have extracted from the sick man's 
body. If the sickness ends fatally, he denounces 
the enemy whose evil wish has caused it, and not 
infrequently it is some rival paye, of the same or 
another nation. Hence I was told that the payes 
