The Count and Countess of Chinchon returned to Spain, as has been said, in 1640. They went to live on their estate at Chinchon Castle, about forty miles from Madrid, and their physician, Juan del Vego, followed them and resided at Seville. Vego brought with him a considerable quantity of the bark from Peru, and sold it at 100 reals per pound. Sprengel queries whether the real of Plata or the real of Vellon is to be understood; the latter was worth about 2d., the Plata or silver real being worth about 8d. It is not at all certain that Vego’s bark was the first importation of the medicine into Spain. A Spanish physician named Villerobel, quoted by Badus in 1663 in a work on the Peruvian bark, states that a quantity was received in 1632, but was not tried until 1639 (a year after the cure of the Countess, it will be noted). The patient was an ecclesiastic of Alcala de Henarez, near Madrid. However this may be, Vego’s reports and the experiments with his bark excited lively interest all through Spain, and from then began a controversy almost as bitter as that between the Galenists and Paracelsists. There were a large number of practitioners who could not bring themselves to believe in any medicine which Galen had not described. It was also alleged by some contemporary writers that a prompt cure of intermittent fevers was not by any means desired by a large number of medical men and apothecaries, who consequently allied themselves in opposition to this very effective bark. This statement is no doubt due to the usual uncharitableness of controversy; but it is possible that the adversaries of the new remedy might at least cling to their old prejudices with not less firmness when these and their interests ran on parallel lines. Fevers were at that time regarded as caused by some morbific principle in the humours which occasioned effervescence, and which it was essential first of all to expel. The patient was, therefore, treated with evacuants and debilitating medicines while the fever continued, and the vital spirits were afterwards restored by a course of cordials and bitters, such as wormwood, chamomile flowers, mace, carduus benedictus, angelica, and valerian. The opponents of the bark insisted that if it palliated the fever it “fixed the humour” and ensured a relapse or some other more dangerous disease. In 1652 Leopold William, Archduke of Austria, and Governor of the Low Countries, who had interested himself in popularising the bark, fell ill with a quaternian fever. He took bark and recovered. A relapse occurred, but the complaint again yielded to the remedy. Some time after he had another attack. This time, perhaps influenced by the views already quoted, he refused to take bark and died. This event was regarded, illogically enough, as evidence of the dangerous character of the medicine.