Pharmacographia A history of the principal drugs of vegetable origin, met with in Great Britain and British India — Key Ideas to Explore

longitudinally. The bark is of a dark blackish brown or even quite black when free from earth, and disposed to exfoliate. The root breaks with a coarse fibrous fracture; the inner substance is of a light yellowish-brown,—sometimes of a dull greenish brown.

Roots of about an inch in diameter cut transversely exhibit a central column 0·2 to 0·4 of an inch in diameter composed of 10 to 20 converging wedges of large-pored woody tissue with 3 or 4 zones divided from each other by a wavy light-coloured line. Crossing these zones are wedge-shaped woody rays, often rather sparsely and irregularly distributed. The interradial substance has a close, resinous, waxy appearance.

[122] _Species Plantarum_, Holmiæ, 1753; see also _Mat. Med._ 1749. No. 459.

[123] Lunan, _Hort. Jamaic._ ii. (1814) 254; Descourtilz, _Flor. méd. des Antilles_, iii. (1827) 231.

[124] Thus it was omitted from the London pharmacopœias of 1809 and 1824, and from many editions of the _Edinburgh Dispensatory_.

[125] Hanbury in _Pharm. Journ._ Aug. 2-9, 1873, pp. 81 and 102.

[126] _Lond. Med. Gazette_, Feb. 16, 1828; Brodie, _Lectures on Diseases of the Urinary Organs_, ed. 3. 1842. 108, 138.

The root though hard is easily shaved with a knife, some pieces giving the impression when cut of a waxy, rather than of a woody and fibrous substance. The taste is bitter, well marked but not persistent. The drug has no particular odour. Its aqueous decoction is turned inky bluish-black by tincture of iodine.

The aerial stems especially differ by enclosing a small but well-defined pith.

=Microscopic Structure=—The most interesting character consists in the arrangement rather than in the peculiarity of the tissues composing this drug. The wavy light-coloured lines already mentioned are built up partly of sclerenchymatous cells. The other portions of the parenchyme are loaded with large starch granules, which are much less abundant in the stem.

=Chemical Composition=—From the examination of this drug made by one of us in 1869,[127] it was shown that the bitter principle is the same as that discovered in 1839 by Wiggers in the drug hereafter described as _Common False Pareira Brava_, and named by him _Pelosine_. It was further pointed out that this body possesses the chemical properties of the _Bibirine_ of Greenheart bark and of the _Buxine_ obtained by Walz from the bark of _Buxus sempervirens_ L. It was also obtained on the same occasion (1869) from the stems and roots of _Cissampelos Pareira_ L. collected in Jamaica; but from both drugs in the very small proportion of about ½ per cent.

Whether to _Buxine_ (for by this name rather than _Pelosine_ it should 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[128] 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 boiling water from the powdered root and not strained.

=Substitutes=—We have already pointed out how the name _Pareira 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 Cissampelos Pareira_ L.—Owing to the difficulty of obtaining good Pareira Brava in the London market, although this plant is very widely diffused over all the tropical regions of both hemispheres, 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 300 lb. It was found impracticable to obtain the root _per se_; and the greater bulk of the drug consisted of long cylindrical stems,[129] many of which had been decumbent and had thrown out rootlets at the joints. They had very much the aspect of the climbing 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.

[127] _Neues Jahrb. f. Pharm._ xxxi. (1869) 257; _Pharm. Journ._ xi. (1870) 192.

[128] “Presentamente (Abutua) é reputada diaphoretica, diuretica e emenagoga, e usada interiormente na dóse de duas a quatro oitavas para uma libra de infusão ou cozimento, nas febres intermittentes, hydropisias, e suspensão de lochios.”—Langgaard, _Diccionario de Medicina domestica e popular_, Rio de Janeiro, i. (1865) 17.

[129] Figured, together with the plant, in Bentley and Trimen, _Medic. Plants_, part 9 (1876).