![]() In the early 19th century, the Paris Chemical School discovered that ipecac root contained two powerful alkaloids, cephaleline and emetine (methylcephealine), which caused continuous vomiting and diarrhea. ![]() Bonnie Schiffman Photography (Getty Images) Emetine hydrochloride Singer Karen Carpenter behind a microphone in a recording studio, Los Angeles, 1980. It was soon proven that ipecac root had no effect on these bacteria, which made it an effective diagnostic element for food poisoning. histolytica was identified, two bacterial genera, Salmonella and Shigella, were found to cause other forms of dysentery. In 1961, after overcoming research difficulties that seemed insurmountable, Louis Klein Diamond managed to cultivate the amoeba in vitro. Regarding dysentery, whose terrible effects killed thousands of people who died drenched in vomit and bloody diarrhea, one of the first milestones for its eradication occurred in 1875 when Fedor Lösch discovered an amoeba (known today as Entamoeba histolytica) in the feces of a patient who suffered from that disease. Then, the plant disappeared from the history of the pharmacopoeia until it reappeared in the 18th century in the master formula of the famous Dover Powder, a cure-all based on ground ipecac root, opium and potassium sulfate that, like modern aspirin, was very popular to treat all types of feverish processes for 200 years. The doctor Helvetius used it to treat the dysentery suffered by relatives of Louis XIV. The written history of ipecacuanha (Carapichea ipecacuanha), the “roadside plant that makes you feel sick” in the Tupi language, begins when it arrived in Europe thanks to Willem Piso, in whose Historia Naturalis Brasiliae (1648) it was cited for the first time as a fever and vomit inducer used by the Amazon’s Indigenous people. Ipecac, an old acquaintance of tropical phytotherapy ![]() The recently published biography of 1970s pop star Karen Carpenter has brought to light that the announcement of her death from heart failure concealed a death due to slow poisoning derived from her addiction to ipecac root, an ancient Indigenous remedy banned from clinical practice since the end of the 20th century.
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