The roots were used to make syrup of ipecac, a powerful emetic, a longtime over-the-counter medicine no longer approved for medical use in the West for lack of evidence of safety and efficacy.

[full citation needed] One of the first recorded shipments of Ipecacuanha to Europe was in 1672, by a traveler named Legros, who imported a quantity of the root to Paris from South America.

[4] In 1680, a Parisian merchant named Garnier possessed some 68 kilograms (150 pounds) of the substance and informed the physician Jean Claude Adrien Helvetius (1685–1755, father of Claude-Adrien Helvétius) of its power in the treatment of dysentery.

[citation needed] Helvetius was granted sole right to vend the remedy by Louis XIV, but sold the secret to the French government, who made the formula public in 1688.

In the 19th century, women prisoners at the Cascades Female Factory, Tasmania, were routinely given "a grain or so of ipecacuanha" as a precaution, especially "upon ladies with gross health and fiery temperaments.