However this may be, the disease and the colonization habit brought in a crude way their own remedy. The Spanish conquerors of Peru were told by the natives that a certain bark which grew upon the slopes of the Andes was a sovereign remedy for those terrible ague seizures. Indian remedies did not stand as high in popular esteem as they do now; but they were in desperate straits and jumped at the chance. To their delight, it proved a positive specific, and a Spanish lady of rank, the Countess Chincona, was so delighted with her own recovery that she carried back a package of the precious Peruvian bark on her return to Europe, and endeavored to introduce it. So furious was the opposition of the Church, however, to this "pagan" remedy that she was completely defeated in her praiseworthy attempt and was obliged to confine her ministrations to those who belonged to her, the peasantry on her own estate. About half a century later, the new remedy excited so much discussion by the numerous cures that it effected, that it was considered worthy of a special council of the Jesuits, who formally pronounced it suitable for the use of the faithful, thereby attaching to it for many years the name of "Jesuit's bark." Virtue, however, is sometimes rewarded in this world, and the devoted and enlightened countess has, all unknown to herself, attained immortality by attaching her name, Chincona, softened into _cinchona_, and hardened into _quinine_, to the greatest therapeutic gift of the gods to mankind. It is not too much to say that the modern colonization of the tropics and subtropics by Northern races, which is one of the greatest and most significant triumphs of our civilization, would have been almost impossible without it. Its advance depended upon two powders, one white and the other black,--quinine and gunpowder.