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Selected articles. 
apprehensions, it was never brought to light. At length, a 
Columbian, Senor Modesto Larrea, being in Italy, fell in with 
that executor, and received from him the original manuscript 
of Padre Velasco, which he carried back with him to Quito. 
Of this history some notice was soon afterwards given in a 
newspaper published under the title of "Gazetade Quito," 
No. 33, and among other passages quoted from it was the fol- 
lowing account of the plant already mentioned. 
" The Cuichunchulli," a name signifying, in the language 
of the Incas, bowels of a Guinea pig, tripa de Cut/, "is like a 
small whitish slender nerve, without any leaf, that rises from 
beneath stones and fastens itself to their surface. There is 
scarcely any plant more powerful. Its virtues, though well 
known to the Indians, were unknown to the Spaniards until 
the year 1754, when an Indian, as a singular favour, revealed 
them to a lay-Jesuit," (z. e. a man-servant in a convent of Je- 
suits) " who was suffering under confirmed lepra" (Elephan- 
tiasis tuberculata) " with all the symptoms and appearances of 
a Lazar, and was considered by the physicians as being in a 
hopeless state. He gave him half a drachm (un adarme) of 
the nerve-like filament, ground and mixed with wine, but 
warned him first to receive the Sacraments. Its operation, 
upwards and downwards, was attended with extreme agony 
during 24 hours, (con agonias mortales,) but the surface of his 
body then became clean and dry (enxuto y seco.) A few days 
afterwards, he began to cast his skin piecemeal, (arrojar lapiel 
a pedazos) and recovered perfectly. Of all which I was an 
eye-witness (ocular testigo) in the city of Cuenca." 
Some time after the publication of this extract, it was copied 
into a newspaper printed at Bagota in 1829, called the Echo 
of Tequendama, No. 5, and through this paper it came in the 
course of the same year to the knowledge of a practitioner at 
Maracay bo, Senor Manuel de Aroche, formerly a medical officer 
in the Spanish Army, whose desire to make trial of the Cui- 
chunchulli induced him to request the assistance of various 
friends to procure it for him; but it was not till near the end 
of 1833 that he succeeded in getting the plant, in consequence 
