_Radix Pareiræ_; _Pareira-Brava_[111]; F. _Racine de Butua ou de
Pareira-Brava_; G. _Grieswurzel_.
=Botanical Origin=—_Chondodendron tomentosum_ Ruiz et Pav. (non
Eichler) (_Cocculus Chondodendron_ DC., _Botryopsis platyphylla_
Miers[112]).—It is a lofty climbing shrub with long woody stems, and
leaves as much as a foot in length. The latter are of variable form,
but mostly broadly ovate, rounded or pointed at the extremity, slightly
cordate at the base, and having long petioles. They are smooth on the
upper side; on the under covered between the veins with a fine close
tomentum of an ashy hue. The flowers are unisexual, racemose, minute,
produced either from the young shoots or from the woody stems. The
fruits are ¾ of an inch long, oval, black and much resembling grapes in
form and arrangement.[113]
[111] From the Portuguese _parreira_, signifying a vine that grows
against a wall (in French _treille_), and _brava_, wild.
[112] For a figure see Bentley and Trimen, _Medic. Plants_, 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. livre 2. cap. 14.
[115] _Hist. de l’Acad. roy. des Sciences_, anneé 1710. 56.
[116] _Traité des maladies les plus fréquentes et des remèdes
spécifiques pour les guérir_, Paris, 1703. 98.
[117] In the volumes of Sloane MSS. No. 4045 and 3322 contained
in the British Museum, are a great many letters to Sloane from
Etienne-François Geoffroy and from his younger brother Claude-Joseph,
dating 1699 to 1744.
[118] _Tract. de Mat. Med._ ii. (1741) 21-25.
[119] _Schediasma de Parreira Brava_, 1719. (ed. 2. auctior.)
[120] _Istoria Botanica_, 1675. 59. fig. 22.
[121] _Medicina Brasiliensis_, 1648. 94.
Thus was introduced a confusion which we may say was _consolidated_
when Linnæus in 1753,[122] founded a species as _Cissampelos Pareira_,
citing it as the source of Pareira Brava,—a confusion which has lasted
for more than a hundred years. This plant is very distinct from that
yielding true Pareira Brava, and though its roots and stems are used
medicinally in the West Indies,[123] there is nothing to prove that
they were ever an object of export to Europe.
As Pareira Brava failed to realise the extravagant pretensions claimed
for it, it gradually fell out of use,[124] and the characters of the
true drug became forgotten. This at least seems to be the explanation
of the fact that for many years past the Pareira Brava found in the
shops and supposed to be genuine is a substance very diverse from the
original drug,—albeit not devoid of medicinal properties. More recently
even this has become scarce, and an inert Pareira Brava has been almost
the sole kind obtainable. The true drug has however still at times
appeared in the European market, and attention having been directed to
it,[125] we may hope that it will arrive in a regular manner.
The re-introduction of Pareira Brava into medical practice is due (so
far as Great Britain is concerned) to Brodie[126] who recommended it in
1828 for inflammation of the bladder.
=Description=—True Pareira Brava as derived from _Chondodendron
tomentosum_ is a long, branching, woody root, attaining 2 inches or
more in diameter, but usually met with much smaller and dividing into
rootlets no thicker than a quill or even than a horse-hair. It is
remarkably tortuous or serpentine and marked with transverse ridges as
well as with constrictions and cracks more or less conspicuous; besides
which the surface is strongly wrinkled 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).
The fracture of the stem is coarse and fibrous. The transverse section,
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,[130] 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 astringency.
[130] It is therefore entirely different to the wood figured as that of
_C. Pareira_ by Eichler in Martius’ _Flor. Bras._ xiii. pars. i. tab.
50. fig. 7.
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 correspondents in
Brazil, from what plant it is derived, but without success. We only
know that it belongs to the order _Menispermaceæ_.
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 bark. The pieces are cylindrical, four-sided, or more or less
flattened—sometimes even to the extent of becoming ribbon-like. In
transverse section, their structure appears very remarkable. Supposing
the piece to be _stem_, a well-defined pith will be found to occupy
the centre of the first-formed wood, which is a column about ¼ of an
inch in diameter. This is succeeded by 10 to 15 or more concentric or
oftener eccentric zones, ⅒ to ²/₁₀ of an inch wide, each separated from
its neighbour by a layer of parenchyme, the outermost being coated with
a true bark. In pieces of _true root_, the pith is reduced to a mere
point.
Sometimes the development of the zones has been so irregular that they
have formed themselves entirely on one side of the primitive column,
the other being coated with bark. The zones, including the layer,
around the pith (if pith is present), are crossed by numerous small
medullary rays. These do not run from the centre to the circumference,
but traverse only their respective zones, on the outside of which they
are arched together.
The drug, when of good quality, has its wood firm, compact, and of a
dusky yellowish-brown hue, and a well-marked bitter taste. It exhibits
under the knife nothing of the close waxy texture seen in the root of
_Chondodendron_, but cuts as a tough, fibrous wood. Its decoction is
not tinged blue by iodine. It was in this drug that Wiggers in 1839
discovered _pelosine_.
The drug just described, which is by no means devoid of medicinal
power, has of late years been almost entirely supplanted in the market
by another sort consisting exclusively of stems which are devoid of
bitterness and appear to be wholly inert. They are in the form of
sticks or truncheons, mostly cylindrical. Cut traversely, they display
the same structure as the sort last described, with a well-defined
pith. The wood is light in weight, of a dull tint, and disposed to
split. The bark, which consists of two layers, is easily detached.
3. _Stems of Chondodendron tomentosum_ R. et P.—These have been
recently imported from Brazil, and sold as _Pareira Brava_.[131] The
drug consists of truncheons about 1½ feet in length, of a rather rough
and knotty stem, from 1 to 4 inches thick.[132] The larger pieces,
which are sometimes hollow with age, display, when cut traversely, a
small number (5-9) nearly concentric woody zones. The youngest pieces
have the bark dotted over with small dark warts.
The wood is inodorous, but has a bitterish taste like the root, of
which it is probably an efficient representative. Some pieces have
portions of root springing from them, and detached roots occur here
and there among the bits of stem. The structure and development of the
latter has been elaborately examined and figured by Moss,[133] and also
by Lanessan,[134] in the French translation of our book.
4. _White Pareira Brava_—Stems and roots of _Abuta rufescens_
Aublet.—Mr. J. Correa de Méllo of Campinas has been good enough to
send to one of us (H.) a specimen of the root and leaves[135] of this
plant, marked _Parreira Brava grande_. The former we have identified
with a drug received from Rio de Janeiro as _Abutua Unha de Vaca_, i.e.
_Cowhoof Abutua_, and also with a similar drug found in the London
market. Aublet[136] states that the root of _Abuta rufescens_ was, in
the time of his visit to French Guiana, shipped from that colony to
Europe as _Pareira Brava Blanc_ (White Pareira Brava).
[131] 45 packages containing about 20 cwt. were offered for sale by
Messrs. Lewis and Peat, drug-brokers, 11 Sept. 1873, but there had been
earlier importations.
[132] From these knots, which are at regular intervals, and sometimes
very protuberant, it would appear that the panicles of flower arise
year after year.
[133] _Pharm. Journ._ vi. (1876) 702.
[134] _Histoire des Drogues d’origine végétale_, i. (Paris, 1878) 72.
[135] I have compared these leaves with Aublet’s own specimen in the
British Museum.—D. H.
[136] _Hist. des Plantes de la Guiane Françoise_, i. (1775) 618. tab.
250.
This name is well applicable to the drug before us, which consists of
short pieces of a root, ½ an inch to 3 inches thick, covered with a
rough blackish bark, and also of bits of stem having a pale, striated,
corky bark. Cut transversely, the root displays a series of concentric
zones of white amylaceous cellular tissue, each beautifully marked with
narrow wedge-shaped medullary rays of dark, porous tissue. The wood of
the stem is harder than that of the root, the medullary rays are closer
together and broader, and there is a distinct pith.
The wood, neither of root nor stem, has any taste or smell. A decoction
of the root is turned bright blue by iodine.
5. _Yellow Pareira Brava_—This drug, of which a quantity was in the
hands of a London drug-broker in 1873, is, we presume, the _Pareira
Brava jaune_ of Aublet—the bitter tasting stem of his “_Abuta amara_
folio levi cordiformi ligno flavescente,”—a plant of Guiana unknown to
recent botanists. That which we have seen consists of portions of a
hard woody stem, from 1 to 5 or 6 inches in diameter, covered with a
whitish bark. Internally it is marked by numerous regular concentric
zones, is of a bright yellow colour and of a bitter taste. It contains
berberine. The same drug, apparently, was exhibited in the Paris
exposition of 1878 as “Liane amère” from French Guiana.