Psychotria ipecacuanha immature fruit plant
Psychotria ipecacuanha fruit plant
Carapichea ipecacuanha (Brot.) L. Andersson
Cephaelis ipecacuanha illustration
- epecacuanha (Oxford
Dictionaries)
1 The dried rhizome of a South American shrub, or a drug prepared from this, used as an emetic and expectorant.
2 The shrub that produces ipecacuanha, native to Brazil and cultivated elsewhere.
Cephaelis ipecacuanha, family Rubiaceae
2.1 Used in names of other plants with similar uses to ipecacuanha, e.g. American ipecacuanha.
Origin
Early 17th century: from Portuguese, from Tupi-Guarani ipekaaguéne 'emetic creeper', from ipe 'small' + kaa 'leaves' + guéne 'vomit'. - ipecac (WebMD)
Ipecac is a plant. It is used to make medicine. Ipecac syrup is available both as a nonprescription product and as an FDA-approved prescription product.
Ipecac is taken by mouth to cause vomiting after suspected poisoning. It is also used to treat bronchitis associated with croup in children, a severe kind of diarrhea (amoebic dysentery), and cancer. Ipecac is also used as an expectorant to thin mucous and make coughing easier. Small doses are used to improve appetite.
Health professionals sometimes give ipecac by IV (intravenously) for hepatitis and pockets of infection (abscesses).
How does it work?
Ipecac contains chemicals that irritate the digestive tract and trigger the brain to cause vomiting. - M. R. Lee, "Ipecacuanha:
The South American Vomiting Root," Journal
of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh 38.4
(2008)
The story of ipecacuanha, derived from the plant Cephaelis, is a fascinating one. It was discovered in Brazil in the 1600s and then transported to Paris in the latter part of the same century. It was used there by the physician Helvetius on various members of the French royal court to treat the flux (dysentery) with some success. Later, in the eighteenth century, it was taken up by the physician and privateer Thomas Dover and became, with opium, a fundamental constituent of his celebrated powder, which was used widely to treat fevers and agues for the next 200 years. Progress was then delayed until the early 1800s when the School of Chemistry at Paris established that the dried root of ipecac contained two powerful alkaloids, emetine and cephaeline, that consistently caused vomiting and diarrhoea. The discovery of the pathogenic amoeba, Entamoeba histolytica, in the latter part of the nineteenth century, allowed a distinction to be made between the two main forms of dysentery (amoebic and bacillary). Emetine was shown to be active against the amoebic form of dysentery but ineffective against that caused by bacteria. Ipecacuanha, its root and the pure alkaloid emetine have now been abandoned on the grounds of toxicity. They have been replaced by safer, more effective compounds. Nevertheless, they deserve an honoured place in the history of medicine, especially in the search for an effective treatment for amoebic dysentery.