[This is a translation of a section of the first book, 'On the Air, Waters, and Places of Brazil', of Piso's massive, four-book work. It is followed by those passages from the fourth book, on the plants of Brazil, that would later be drawn upon in G. W. Leibniz's De novo antidysenterico americano of 1695, a translation of which will follow shortly. Among other interesting features of this work, the selection translated from Book I may very well be the first European description ever of couvade, which would later be well attested in the ethnographic record. The original Latin text follows. And yes, this is how I spend my Saturday nights.]
Book I.
...The women are marvellously fertile, and give birth with little pain,
rarely aborting. At the time of childbirth the husband lies down in the
place of the wife for the duration of the labor, and, like a woman about
to give birth, enjoys sweetmeats and feasting, citing the necessity of
restoring his lapsed vigor. A preposterous custom, of course, which
nevertheless appears to them to be most praiseworthy, as many women,
immediately after giving birth, with no one having assisted them, get right up to meet [the men]; nay more, they hasten to the
nearby river to cleanse their body, and from here they seek out their
nourishment. They do not bemoan the killing of children beyond two or
three days, with the mothers filling the whole place with their
miserable wailing. With the profuse tears that they have in their power
they welcome their relations and their returning friends, whose
misfortunes and labors they [peregre] endure, weeping with many
sighs and groans, and pressing them to their chests with arms around
their neck and head.
Those who live among the Hollanders and the Portuguese follow Christ,
though more indifferently, and the adults are very laid-back with
respect to our efforts: nor can our pleading make its way much into
their heads, unless they are of a tender age, with souls that are not
yet preoccupied, and that are remote from their parents. Their languages
are hardly different the one from the other. And however much those who
are born [there] descend from a lineage of cannibals, nevertheless
through mutual exchange with Europeans and through habit they are
improved, and they shed their barbarity, attaining to a humanity that is
comparable to our own. Unlike Mediterranean peasants, they are truculent, brutal, without law,
without religion, they roam in the manner of wild beasts, without any
fixed or stable quarters, and here and there will lie in wait, with
admirable knowledge and swiftness, for the fish or wild animals that
will be their victuals, whether these be abundant or scarce. They know
how to hurl javelins, without a bow, with the most admirable strength
and with stupendous skill... The men and the women as well go about with
nothing covering their pudenda, with their hair disshevelled, though
some of them have it clipped, and with the other body parts hairless;
and they adorn themselves with the feathers of differently colored
birds. They disgracefully paint their bodies with a certain dusky color
pressed out of the lanipapa apple. And nor is the face free of
ornamentation: they affix the most vile and tedious little stones to
their ears, which have been pierced since earliest infancy, as well as
to the lower and upper lips.
When one of them falls ill, his friends approach, and they conjure a
trick, making notice of a remedy that they have already tried out on
themselves. Next they scarify and cut deep into the skin of his muscular
arms and of parts of his thighs with the spines of the Carnaiba tree,
and with the teeth of the fish they also use to sharpen their arrows, so
that he bleeds profusely... They bring on vomiting by force by means of
the twisted leaves of the Carnaiba, which they force into his throat.
With these and similar remedies tried out in vain, they attempt nothing
else, nor yet do they relinquish the sick man, but by unanimous
consensus, as if desperate for his health, they kill him off with a
wooden cudgel, still gratifying him and themselves, that his death has
come to pass in a masculine fashion, and that he is liberated of all
suffering. In this way, indeed, they rejoice and glory in this moment of
death. It is with great applause among his relatives that his enemies
take vengeance upon the cadaver of the victim, this one for a shameful
love, that one out of brutal indivtiveness, tearing him to pieces in the
most savage manner of wild beasts. Others come forth for the flesh and
bones, down to the teeth, scraping them down for their frightful
banquet.
Book IV.
Chapter 49. Of Caa-apia and Its Properties.
... The indigenous people crush the plant, and expel the poison from
the stomach by the juice that is drunk: wounded by serpents or struck by
poison arrows, they pour it drop by drop into the wounded person in
lieu of an antidote, and not without success. Here there are also other
species of Caa-apia, similar in all respects to the first one, except as
concerns their leaves, which are of course of the same figure, but are
serrated and bristly along their edge, and their stalks are covered with
sparse hairs...
Chapter 65. Of Ipecacuanha and Its Properties
Finally, the proper order of things brings us to those much-vaunted
salutary roots, which, beyond their power of purgation by both the upper
and lower passages, are eminently opposed to all poison. Nor do I
believe that one could find on this earth a more effective remedy
against the many illnesses arising from a long obstruction, and above
all for the assuaging of the fluxus ventris.
There exist two species, neither having been described, to my knowledge,
nor their excellent qualities brought to light. And both are dedicated
to the same use, but with different degrees of powers, depending upon
their figure and their native soil. Indeed, one of them, the smaller
one, lying low in the soil, grows in meadows; it is not so different
from pennyroyal, for the stalk extends upward with many lanuginous
leaves, and is encircled with little white flowers. Its root is course,
fibrous, whitish, and it is called by the Portuguese, for the sake of
distinction, Ipecacuanha blanca, which, while agitating the body
less, resists most powerfully against poisons, and is likewise given to
children and to pregnant women.
The other is a demi-cubit in length, though endowed with only three or
four leaves. It delights in dark places, and is found in denser forests.
At the top of its stalk it produces black berries, though not many. Its
root is fine, winding, knotted, of a dusky color, unpleasant to the
taste, bitter, hot, and piercing. In a dried form it is kept for many
years, nor is it easy to cut. Its dosage is one drachma if reduced to a
powder, or, in an infusion, two drachmae, give or take.
And both [species] are for daily use, though they prefer it diluted,
since either in chewing on it at night in the open air or in mixing it
in water, it powerfully communicates its medical virtue to the liquors
[of the body]. Afterwards a caput mortuum is left over, and it is
prepared again in the same way and is furnished for the same use;
though no longer as effective for purging and vomiting, it is now more
effective as an astringent. Thus this root does not only remove even the
most tenacious sickness-inducing matter from the affected part,
expelling it through the upper passage, but also, functioning as an
astringent, restores the tonus of the viscera. Beyond this, it relieves
flatulence and other illnesses, counters the effect of poisons and of
venoms both hidden and manifest, immediately expelling them through
vomiting. Wherefore it is carefully [religiose] guarded by the
Brazilians, who first revealed its virtues to us.
