Am.  Joi/n.  Pharm.  } 
Oct.  1, 1873.  $ 
On  Pareira  Brava. 
451 
among  the  good  druggists  and  is  sold  [at]  Pari3  for  40  livres  the 
pound.  'Tis  called  in  Brazil  the  Universall  Medicine,  and  made  use 
of  there  in  all  kinds  of  distempers.  A  Capuchin  monk  who  came 
from  thence  told  me  he  could  not  give  it  a  greater  character  than  by 
assuring  me  that  in  all  their  voyages  they  carried  the  gospell  in  one 
pockett  and  the  Pareira  Brava  in  another.    .    .    .  " 
Helvetius  recommended  the  finely-powdered  root  in  five  grain  doses, 
to  be  taken  in  infusion  warm  like  tea. 
Pftiver,  apothecary  of  London,  and  Secretary  to  the  Roj^al  Society, 
an  active  collector  of  objects  of  natural  history  of  every  kind,  whose 
letters  are  also  in  the  Sloanian  collection,  thus  wrote,  Dec.  11th,  1716, 
to  Colonel  Worsley,  His  Majesty's  Envoy  at  Lisbon  : — 
"  ...  I  am  glad  to  hear  ye  Brazil  ffleet  is  safely  arrived, 
wcJl  I  hope  has  brought  some  materialls  for  my  succeeding  Collecta- 
neas,  and  amongst  them  nothing  can  be  more  welcome  than  specimens 
of  ye  leaves  and  fruit  of  ye  Ipecacuanha,  Pareira  Brava,  Balsam  Ca- 
pev&3  and  ye  true  Brasile  and  Brasiletto  woods,  all  which  will  be  very 
acceptable  discoveries.    .    .  ."* 
The  first  author  to  give  an  account  in  print  of  Pareira  Brava  seems 
to  be  Pomet,  whose  Hist  aire  ties  Drogues  was  completed  in  1692. f 
He  describes  the  drug  as  then  recently  seen  in  Paris,  and  he  figures 
the  specimen  given  him  by  Tournefort. 
Geoffroy,  in  his  excellent  Tractatus  de  Materia  Medica,%  a  work 
he  did  not  live  to  complete,  calls  the  drug  by  its  Brazilian  name  of 
Butua,  or  Pareira  Brava  of  the  Portuguese,  and  describes  it  as  a 
root,  woody,  hard,  contorted,  externally  of  dark  color,  rough,  with 
many  wrinkles,  some  long,  some  running  round  it  transversely,  like 
that  of  Thymelcea  [Daphne  Gnidium  L.],  internally  of  a  dull,  yel- 
lowish hue,  knit  together,  as  it  were,  writh  many  woody  fibres,  so  that, 
when  cut  transversely  it  exhibits  several  concentric  circles,  intersect- 
ed by  numerous  rays  of  fibres  passing  from  the  centre  to  the  circum- 
ference;  inodorous,  somewhat  bitter,  with  a  certain  degree  of  sweet- 
ness like  lirjuorice,  as  thick  as  the  finger,  or  sometimes  as  a  child's 
arm.    He  adds  that  the  Brazilians  and  Portuguese  most  highly  extol 
*  Sloane  MS.,  3340,  p.  306. 
t  As  proved  by  the  letters  of  approbation  which  precede  it.    But  it  was  nok 
published  until  1  f>04. 
X  Tom.  II.  (1711)  21. 
