page_title: Contrayerva
section_title: Origin of the contrayerva root
hierarchical_section_title: Contrayerva / Origin of the contrayerva root
caption_attribution_description: English: Illustration of Drakena radix by Carolus Clusius from Exoticorum libri decem 1605, page 311.
context_page_description: Contrayerva, or contrajerva, is the medicinal rhizome of various tropical Central American and South American species of Dorstenia in the family Moraceae, mainly Dorstenia contrajerva and the closely related Dorstenia drakena but also Dorstenia brasiliensis. The word contrayerva means “counter herb” in Spanish. It was given this name since a 16th-century description claimed that the leaves of a herb were used by South American Indians to counter the deadly poisonous effect of the same herb when used as an arrow poison. Seventeenth century herbalists and botanists identified this herb as the aromatic root that had been brought from Peru to England by Francis Drake, and claimed that it was an antidote against all kinds of poison. By the late 18th century contrayerva had lost its reputation as an antidote, but it continued to be listed in European and American pharmacopoeias and herbals until the 1920s as a gentle stimulant, tonic and diaphoretic. It is still used in folk medicine in Central and South America.
context_section_description: The official contrayerva root or radix contrayervae in 18th century English medical literature was Dorstenia contrajerva, but the roots of other Dorstenia species such as the closely related Dorstenia drakenaand Dorstenia brasiliensis were also often collected and sold. The 18th century physician and botanist William Woodville wrote: “upon the faith of Dr. Houston, who examined the Contrayerva plants in their native soil, we should otherwise have had no doubt in referring the official radix contrayervae to the species (i.e. Dorstenia contrajerva) he has described, as has been done by Bergius and Murray. But as Houston has observed, that the roots of different species of Dorstenia are promiscuously gathered and exported for those of the Contrayerva; and as all the species bear a great resemblance to each other, we conceive the further discussion of this subject to be of no material consequence.” The 19th century English pharmacologist Jonathan Pereira wrote in his Elements of Materia Medica that the Contrayerva root “usually met in the shops” is not Dorstenia contrajerva but Dorstenia brasiliensis—“A native of Jamaica, Brazil, and Trinidad.”
  The first mention of contrayerva is found in Nicolás Monardes Historia medicinal de las cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales, 1580. In this work Monardes reproduced a letter by an informant in Peru, the Spaniard Pedro de Osma y de Xara y Zejo, who writes that he has been informed by his soldier cousin that the leaves of a herb (“yerua” = yerva = hierba) with broad leaves resembling those of the plantain are used as by the native Indians as a counter herb (“contra yerua”) against injuries caused by arrows poisoned with the deadly poison made from this same poisonous herb (“una yerua, que es contra yerua”). There is no mention of the root in the letter and book nor any recipes.
  A report recorded by Hans Sloane in the early 18th century describes the manner the Spanish in America are said to have discovered the use of the contrayerva: When a Spaniard was injured by a poison arrow shot by an Indian, the Spaniards threatened to injure one of their Indian prisoners with a poisoned arrow unless he revealed the cure. Thereupon the “Indian immediately chaw'd some of this Contra Yerva, and put it into the wound, and it healed.”
  Carolus Clusius described the root twice in his Exoticorum libri decem (1605), without making a link between the two. First he describes it as the Drakena radix and later on, in a translation from a Spanish work by Monardus or Nicolás Monardes, as contrayerva,
  The English herbalist Thomas Johnson linked the two roots (1633): “That root which of late is known in some shops by the Spanish name Contra-yerva is the same which Clusius hath set forth by the title of Drakena radix wherfore I will give you the histoorie of Clusius and thereto adde that which Monardus writes of the Contra-yerva. For although Bauhine and the Author of the Historia Lugdunensis seeme to make these different yet I finde that both Clusius his figure and historie exactly agree with the roots sent us from Spaine by that title. Wherefore I shall make them one till some shal shew me how they differ ...”
  Johnson continues by giving translations from Clusius' Exoticorum libri decem: “...Sr Francis Drake gave me at London certain roots ... hee had brought with him affirming them to be of high esteem amongst the Peruvians. ... N. Eliot (= Lawrence Eliot ) who accompanied Francis Drake in that voyage, said that the Spaniards in Peru had them in great request and they could not easily be got of them, and that be had learned by them that the leaves were present poison, but the root an antidote, and that not only against the same poison but also against other; and that it strengthned the heart and vitall faculties, if it were beaten to pouder and taken in the morning in a little wine and given in water it mitigated the heate of Peuers (= fevers). By reason of these faculties it should much agree with the Radix Contra-yerva whereof Monardus writes in the same booke. Thus much Clusius. From Charchis a
caption: Drakena radix by Clusius.
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