Travels in Peru and India: While Superintending the Collection of Chinchona Plants and Seeds in South America, and Their Introduction into India. — John Shaqi
Travels in Peru and India: While Superintending the Collection of Chinchona Plants and Seeds in South America, and Their Introduction into India.Markham, Clements R. (Clements Robert), Sir
History
Travels in Peru and India: While Superintending the Collection of Chinchona Plants and Seeds in South America, and Their Introduction into India.
Markham, Clements R. (Clements Robert), Sir
Cinchona; India -- Description and travel; Peru -- Description and travel
The Count of Chinchon returned to Spain in 1640, and his Countess,
bringing with her a quantity of the healing bark, was thus the first
person to introduce this invaluable medicine into Europe.[14] Hence
it was sometimes called Countess's bark, and Countess's powder. Her
physician, Juan de Vega, sold it at Seville for one hundred reals the
pound. In memory of this great service Linnæus named the genus which
yields it _Chinchona_, and afterwards the lady Ana's name was still
further immortalized in the great family of _Chinchonaceæ_, which,
together with _Chinchonæ_, includes ipecacuanhas and coffees. By modern
writers the first _h_ has usually been dropped, and the word is now
almost invariably, but most erroneously, spelt _Cinchona_.
After the cure of the Countess of Chinchon, the Jesuits were the
great promoters of the introduction of bark into Europe. In 1639, as
the last act of his viceroyalty, her husband did good service to the
cause of geographical discovery, by causing the expedition under the
Portuguese Texeira to proceed from Quito to the mouth of the Amazons,
accompanied by the Jesuit Acuña, who wrote a most valuable account of
the voyage.[15] From that time the missionaries of Acuña's fraternity
continued to penetrate into the forests bordering on the upper waters
of the Amazons, and to form settlements; and Humboldt mentions a
tradition that these Jesuits accidentally discovered the bitterness
of the bark, and tried an infusion of it in tertian ague. In 1670 the
Jesuit missionaries sent parcels of the powdered bark to Rome, whence
it was distributed to members of the fraternity throughout Europe
by the Cardinal de Lugo, and used for the cure of agues with great
success. Hence the name of "Jesuits' bark," and "Cardinal's bark;" and
it was a ludicrous result of its patronage by the Jesuits that its use
should have been for a long time opposed by Protestants and favoured
by Roman Catholics. In 1679 Louis XIV. bought the secret of preparing
quinquina from Sir Robert Talbor, an English doctor, for two thousand
louis-d'ors, a large pension, and a title. From that time Peruvian
bark seems to have been recognised as the most efficacious remedy for
intermittent fevers. The second Lord Shaftesbury, who died in 1699,
mentions in one of his letters--"Dr. Locke's and all our ingenious and
able doctors' method of treating fevers with the Peruvian bark:" he
declares his belief that it is "the most innocent and effectual of all
medicines;" but he also alludes to "the bugbear the world makes of it,
especially the tribe of inferior physicians."
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