Be Candolle Syst. Nat. i. p. 530. Cl. 22. Ord. 10. Linn. Dicecia Dodecandria. Nat. ord. Menispermiae. G. 1826. Male. Calyx four-leaved. Corolla none. Nect. rotate.

Stamens five. Filaments connate.

Female. Calyx one-leafed, ligulate, subrotund. Corolla none. Styles five. Berries one-seeded. Sp. 15. C. Pareira. Willd.tome 9.p. 861. Woodville's Med. Bot. 227.

t. 82.

Officinal. Pareira, Lond. Pareira (Brava).

This plant is a native of South America, Jamaica, Saint Domingo, and several other of the West India islands. It is a climbing plant, with smooth or closely pressed pubescent stems. The leaves are semi-orbiculate, mucrenate at the apex, smooth on the upper but pubescent on the under disk, with the petioles of various length, often longer than the limb, and peltate in both sexes. The flowers are in racemose corymbs with divaricate pubescent branches, and furnished with sessile bractes, roundish, scarcely mucrenulate at the apex. The fruit is a roundish, compressed, red berry, with a rugose, attenuated margin, and covered with long hairs.

Qualities.-The root, which is the officinal part, is imported in pieces of various thickness, from that of the finger to the arm, and two feet or more in length, often twisted, and covered with a thin, firmly-adhering, smooth, brown cuticle. The interior is ligneous, of a yellow colour, and porous. It is inodorous, and has a sweetish, nauseous, bitter taste; yielding its properties both to water and alcohol. According to the analysis of M. Fenuelle, it contains a soft resin, a yellow colouring matter, a brown principle, fecula, malate of lime, nitrate of potassa, and a peculiar azotised matter.

1 Mutis, conceiving that fermentation is the best method for extracting the active part of cinchona, has proposed to make a beer of it, by fermenting one part of the bark in powder with eight parts of honey or sugar, and 80 or 100 of water. And Alibert, having persuaded a brewer to make some beer with cinchona, administered it to convalescents, weakened by protracted intermittents, with the best effects.

2 This was always the case, on the first introduction of the remedy into European practice. In the Schedion, two drachms in fine powder are ordered to be macerated for three hours in a glass of white wine, and given at the commencement of the paroxysm. The patient was also ordered to abstain from all other medicine.

Medical properties and uses,-According to Piso, the juice of this species of Pareira was formerly employed in Brazil against the bites of serpents. It was also known to the Brazilians as a remedy in obstructions of the urinary organs. Pareira Brava is moderately tonic, aperient, and diuretic. Helvetius first investigated its influence in nephritic and calculous cases; and he ascribed to it lithontriptic powers. Geoffrey, who also examined it as a medicine, says that it operates by dissolving the mucous, by which the sabulous matter adheres in calculous diseases; but it is probable that its influence is purely tonic and diuretic. Sir Benjamin Brodie extols its powers in chronic inflammation of the bladder : it allays, he thinks, the irritability of the organ, and lessens the formation of the ropy, alkaline mucous. It has also been administered in ulcerations of the kidneys, leucor-rhoea, dropsy, rheumatism, and jaundice. Sir B. Brodie adds to it the tincture of henbane; and where there is a deposit of the triple phosphates, indicated by milky urine, and an ir-ridescent pellicle on its surface, he conjoins with it nitric acid.

The dose of the powdered root is from 3 ss. to 3j.

Officinal preparation.-Infusum Pareirae, L.