wo years after the discovery of America, the Tordesillas Treaty, in 1494, gave Portugal the right to colonize up to 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. It quickly entered the New World by way of Bahia. A fantastic world, new in geography, flora, fauna, races and cultures, was discovered (Figure 1). Among the new findings was herbal medicine. The first information related to pilocarpine came from the Canarian Jesuit Anchieta, who, in 1554, founded Sao Paulo, Brazil. In 1560, he mentioned in a letter a certain Brazilian medicinal plant that may have been related to pilocarpine.2 A few years later, in 1570, the explorer Gabriel Soares de Souza wrote that Guarani Indians used the leaves of a plant called jaborandi, which minutes after ingestion or infusion produced salivation or sweating, and which, when taken in large quantities, produced so much urination and pulmonary and buccal secretion that it caused death by asphyxia. 3 Jaborandi was an indigenous word meaning “slobber-mouth,”and the plant was so-named because chewing its leaves produced saliva and dribble. The Jesuit Cardim, also Portuguese, wrote in 1584 about labigrandi, perhaps the same medicinal herb, used to treat liver diseases. 4 Poorly defined reports appeared over the two next centuries about similar plants from the tropical and subtropical Atlantic South America, used by Guarani, Tupi, and other Indian tribes mainly belonging to present day Brazil and Paraguay. The leaves, fruit spikes, and roots of this plant, as a result of evidence, deduction, or superstition, were used by indigenous Indians to treat various diseases, such as mouth ulcers, marsh fever, hydropsy, psoriasis, and poisonous reptile bites, and, occasionally, were used to poison arrows. Even earlier in the history of phytotherapy, in the second century, Galen published more than 500 medical phytopreparations,5 which are still known as Galenic preparations. After nine centuries without any important additional information on the subject, Avicenna, in the eleventh century, wrote his Canon, in which he attempted to systematize all the medical knowledge accumulated to date. 6 It contained 760 therapeutic preparations, most of plant origin. The books of Galen and Avicenna were mainly based on traditions, and they were the basic texts used in Christian and Muslim universities until the eighteenth century. Science advanced, and during the Renaissance, the demand for a more experimental pharmacology emerged. Paracelsus, professor of medicine in Basel, who fought against the unfounded assertions of quacks, alchemists, and witch doctors, publicly burned the books of Galen and Avicenna in front of his students in a symbolic demonstration of changing to a more empirical science.7 Paracelsus’ iatrochemistry (which endeavored to explain the conditions of health or disease by chemical principles), despite being considered muddled in many aspects, demonstrated the desire for a more scientific approach. At the same time, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, botanists studied and classified many species of the New World, such as ipecacuanha, quina, coca, etc., and, among these, several species of jaborandi of the generi Pilocarpus and Piper.8, 9 Pilocarpus was a neologism derived from Greek pilo (felt hat), and carpos (fruit) because of the shape of its fruit.
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Oct 1, 2005
Alex Roland 
Open Access