Pharmacographia : a history of the principal drugs of vegetable origin, met with in Great Britain and British India / by Friedrich A. Flückiger and Daniel Hanbury.

Friedrich August Flückiger

Date:: 1874

Credit: Pharmacographia : a history of the principal drugs of vegetable origin, met with in Great Britain and British India / by Friedrich A. Flückiger and Daniel Hanbury. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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$be designated) is due the medicinal power of the drug may well be doubted. No further chemical examination of true Pareira Brava has been made. Uses—The medicine is prescribed in chronic catarrhal affections of the bladder and in calculus. From its extensive use in Brazil ^ it seems deserving of trial in other complaints. Helvetius used to give it in substance, which in 5-grain doses was taken in infusion made with boil- ing water from the powdered root and not strained. Substitutes—We have already pointed out how the name Parnra Brava has been applied to several other drugs than that described in the foregoing pages. We shall now briefly notice the more important 1. Stems and roots of Oissampelos Pareira L.—Owing to the diffi- culty of obtaining good Pareira Brava in the London market, the firm of which one of us was formerly a member (Messrs. Allen and Hanburys, Plough Court, Lombard Street) caused to be collected in Jamaica under the superintendence of Mr. N, Wilson, of the Bath Botanical Gardens, the stems and root of Cissampelos Pareira L., of which it imported in 1866—67—68 about 300ib. It was found impracticable to obtain the root 'per se; and the greater bulk of the drug consisted of long cylin- drical stems many of which had been decumbent and had thrown out rootlets at the joints. They had very much the aspect of the climb- ing stems of Clematis Vitalba L., and varied from the thickness of a quill to that of the forefinger, seldom attaining the diameter of an inch. The stems have a light brown bark marked longitudinally with shallow furrows and wrinkles, which sometimes take a spiral direction. Knots one to three feet apart, sometimes throwing out a branch, also occur. The root is rather darker in colour but not very different in structure from the stem. The fracture of the stem is coarse and fibrous. The transverse sec- tion, whether of stem or root, shows a thickish, corky bark surrounding a light brown wood composed of a number of converging wedges (10 to 20) of very porous structure, separated by narrow medullary rays. There are no concentric layers of wood,^ nor is the arrangement of the wedges oblique as in many other stems of the order. The drug is inodorous, but has a very bitter taste without sweetness or astrin- gency. 2. Common False Pareira Brava—Under this name we designate the drug which for many years past has been the ordinary Pareira Brava of the shops, and regarded until lately as derived from Cissampelos Pareira L. We have long endeavoured to ascertain, through corre- spondents in Brazil, from what plant it is derived, but without success. We only know that it belongs to the order Menispermaceoi. The drug consists of a ponderous, woody, tortuous stem and root, occurring in pieces from a few inches to a foot or more in length, and from 1 to 4 inches in thickness, coated with a thin, hard, dark brown ^ '' Prcsontamente [Abutua] 6 reputada Diccionario de Mcdicina domestica e popular, diaplioretica, diuretica e emenagoga, eusada Rio de Janeiro, i. (1865) 17. interioimente iia dose de duas a quatro - It is therefore entirely different to the oitavas para uma libra de iiifusao ou cozi- wood figured as that of C. Pareira by Eichler mento, nas febres intermittentes, hydro- in Martins' Flor. Bras. xiii. pars. i. tab. 50. pisias, e suspensao de lochios.—Langgaard, fig. 7.$