Pareira.

Botanical name: 

Pareira brava (Chondrodendron tomentosum) is a climbing shrub, native to Peru and Brazil, and adjacent sections of South America. The Portuguese missionaries of the seventeenth century who visited Brazil learned of its reputed qualities from the natives, who under the name abutua or butua valued it highly for its therapeutic virtues. The Portuguese gave it the name Pareira brava, or wild vine, with reference to its mode of growth. Its reputed medicinal qualities, learned from the natives, were made conspicuous by Michel Amelot, ambassador of Louis XIV to Lisbon, who found it in that city and carried it with him to Paris. The botanist Pomet (519), 1694, described the plant in his "History of Drugs," Paris. After an eventful botanical record embracing considerable discussion as well as confusion with some other drugs, during which Pareira brava enjoyed professional conspicuity in Europe, it dropped from general use, the extraordinary pretensions long made for it being now practically forgotten.


The History of the Vegetable Drugs of the U.S.P., 1911, was written by John Uri Lloyd.