Part 5

(1876); also Eichler in Martius’ _Flor. Bras._ fasc. 38. tab. 48. The _Cissampelos Abutua_ of Vellozo’s _Flora Fluminensis_, tom. x. tab. 140 appears to us the same plant.

[113] See _Pharm. Journ._ Aug. 2, 1873. 83; _Yearbook_, 1873. 28; _Am. Journ. of Pharm_. Oct. 1, 1873. fig. 3; _Hanbury Science Papers_. 382.

The plant grows in Peru and Brazil,—in the latter country in the neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro, where it occurs in some abundance on the range of hills separating the Copacabana from the basin of the Rio de Janeiro. It is also found about San Sebastian further south.

=History=—The Portuguese missionaries who visited Brazil in the 17th century became acquainted with a root known to the natives as _Abutua_ or _Butua_, which was regarded as possessing great virtues. As the plant affording it was a tall climbing shrub with large, simple, long-stalked leaves, and bore bunches of oval berries resembling grapes, the Portuguese gave it the name of _Parreira brava_ or Wild Vine.

The root was brought to Lisbon where its reputed medicinal powers attracted the notice of many persons, and among others of Michel Amelot, ambassador of Louis XIV., who took back some of it when he returned to Paris in 1688. Specimens of the drug also reached the botanist Tournefort, and one presented by him to Pomet was figured and described by the latter in 1694.[114] The drug was again brought to Paris by Louis-Raulin Rouillé, the successor to Amelot at Lisbon, together with a memoir detailing its numerous virtues.

Specimens obtained in Brazil by a naval officer named De la Mare in the early part of the last century, were laid before the French Academy, which body requested a report upon them from Geoffroy, professor of medicine and pharmacy in the College of France, who was already somewhat acquainted with the new medicine. He reported many favourable trials in cases of inflammations of the bladder and suppression of urine.[115] The drug was a favourite remedy of Helvetius,[116] physician to Louis XIV. and Louis XV., who administered it for years with great success.

Both Geoffroy and Helvetius were in frequent correspondence with Sloane[117] who received from the former as well as from other sources specimens of Pareira Brava, which are still in the British Museum and have enabled us fully to identify the drug as the root of _Chondodendron tomentosum_.

Several other plants of the order _Menispermaceæ_ have stems or roots employed in South America in the same manner as _Chondodendron_. Pomet had heard of two varieties of Pareira Brava, and two were known to Geoffroy.[118] Lochner of Nürnberg who published a treatise on Pareira Brava in 1719[119] brought forward a plant of Eastern Africa figured in 1675 by Zanoni,[120] and supposed to be the mother plant of the drug. A species of _Cissampelos_ called by the Portuguese in Brazil _Caapeba_, _Cipó de Cobras_ or _Herva de Nossa Senhora_ described by Piso in 1648,[121] afterwards became associated with Pareira Brava on account of similarity of properties.

[114] _Hist. des Drog._ Paris, 1694. part i .