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.
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.