ABSTRACT

Notes: Everybody loves the name “jackass bitters,” and it is used for almost everything except diabetes in Belize. Central American herbal expert Dr. Rosita Arvigo and I have listed a whole host of ailments treatable with what Belizeans call “jackass bitters” (in Panama, I had known it three decades earlier as “contragavlina”), ameba, beef worm, Candida, other fungi, giardia, headlice, intestinal parasites, ringworm, and screw worm. As a matter of fact, Rosita peddles “jackass bitters” as the primary ingredient of her “Traveler’s Tonic” for tourists suffering Montezuma’s revenge or malaria. Surrounded by a group of local female healers, some Maya, some African-American, Rosita stressed the power of “jackass bitters” for vaginal yeast infections at the rst Rainforest Pharmacy Workshop held in Belize (May 20-28, 1995). Boiled leaves are used as a fungicide or an insecticide on diseased house or garden plants.