Note on jaborandi / by William Craig, M.D.

  • William Craig
Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Note on jaborandi / by William Craig, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    5/12
    Dr Coutinho, of Eio Janeiro, has lately introduced to the notice of the medical profession a new drug called jaborandi, which possesses remarkable properties, both as a sialogogue and as a diaphoretic. Jaborandi, the name given by the Indians to this new medicine, is a shrub which grows in the interior of certain provinces of the north of Brazil. The parts used are the leaves and small branches. From these, when bruised, an infusion is prepared which possesses the remarkable properties of the drug, it is now more than a year since a small quantity of this plant was brought to Paris by Dr Coutinho; and Professor Gubler, after experimenting with it at one of the hospitals of Paris, declared that the effects of jaborandi were extremely remarkable, and the evidence irresistible. Owing to tlie difficulty of procuring this drug, little of it reached this country till the beginning of the present year. It was on the 5th of January that I received my first supply, and I believe I received the first packet that came to Scotland. I lost no time in making an experiment, and found that the drug was possessed of remarkable physiological properties. Since that time, I have received sufficient to enable me to ascertain fully its physiological, and to a certain extent its therapeutic, properties. It is not my intention, in this paper, to detail at length the various experiments I have made with this medicine. I shall merely give the general results, which are sufficiently remarkable to interest the members of this Society. An infusion, prepared from one drachm of the bruised leaves, when swallowed, produces the following results :—About twenty minutes after the infusion is swallowed, salivation commences, and in a few minutes afterwards the mouth is literally flowing with water. This continues for four or five hours, and during that period, from ten to sixteen ounces of fluid may be easily collected. The infusion is acid, has a peculiar and characteristic odour, a mawkish but not unpleasant taste, and in doses corresponding to one drachm of the leaves, I have never found it produce any nausea. I have invariably used the strained infusion, and am
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