THE CINCHONA PLANT 



CINCHONA 



Introduction 

 into India 



these, can never be seriously advanced as evidence of value. For one thing 

 it seems likely that the full effect of the years of famine was not effaced 

 by 1903, and that better results would be shown in subsequent years. 

 Local and accidental peculiarities are ignored by all such calculations. 

 Recent Keturns. Still, the figures given are of some interest. Later returns for 1905, which 

 have since come to hand, show the following prices (seers to the rupee) : 

 Eastern Bengal and Assam, 12'61 ; Bengal, 14'99 ; Agra, 17'34 ; Oudh, 

 17-21 ; Rajputana, 16'3 ; Central India, 15'71 ; Panjab and N.W. 

 Frontier, 20'63 ; Sind and Baluchistan, 15'5 ; Bombay, 13'59 ; Central 

 Provinces, 16*49 ; and Berar, 15'14. 



D.E.P., 



ii. 289-316. 



Peruvian 



Bark. 



History. 



Discovery. 



Dissemination. 



Early Indian 

 Medical Writer. 



Plants named 

 Botanically. 



Grown in Paris. 



CINCHONA, Linn. ; CINCHONA and PERUVIAN BARK, JESUITS' 

 BARK ; ecorce de quinquina (Fr.) ; chinarinde (Germ.) ; RUBIACE^E. 

 The species of Cinchona that yield QUININE are the most recently culti- 

 vated of all important plants. They are natives of the mountain forests 

 of Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador, and are chiefly met with in the valleys 

 with an eastern trend from the great Andes, at altitudes between 3,000 and 

 9,000 feet and also in the western valleys of the central area. 



History. Sir George King, than whom few persons have a higher claim on 

 the respect of the people of India opens his Manual on Cinchona Cultivation 

 with the following passages : " Of the date and manner of the first discovery 

 of the curative effects of Cinchona Bark, in milarious fevers, we know nothing. 

 And we are almost equally ignorant who the discoverers were, some writers 

 claiming that merit for the aborigines of South America, while others assert, and 

 with apparently greater accuracy, that not only did the Indians know nothing 

 of the virtues of the bark, until these were pointed out by their conquerors the 

 Spaniards, but that they still refuse to use the bark as a febrifuge. The introduc- 

 tion of this medicine to Europe is associated with the Countess of Chinchon, wife 

 of a Spanish Viceroy of Peru, who having been cured by its use of an attack of 

 fever, contracted while in that country, brought a quantity of the bark to Europe 

 on her return from iSouth America about the year 1639." Acquaintance with 

 the virtue of the bark seems, however, to have been disseminated over the world 

 with remarkable rapidity. It was discussed, extolled, and defended by Chiflet 

 in 1653 ; by Badius in 1656 ; by Roland Sturm in 1659 ; by Morton in 1692; 

 and by Pomet in 1694. It was known in London in 1655, and became officinal 

 in the Pharmacopsedia in 1677. Fryer, who visited India in 1675, speaks of a 

 " Brachmin " who gave a powder prepared from natural cinnabar in the cure of 

 fever " which works as infallibly as the Peruvian Bark." This curiously interest- 

 ing anecdote shows the rapidity with which the knowledge of this drug was carried 

 across the globe. A century later it was fully described in an Indian work on 

 Materia Medica under the name " Bark." This was written by Mir Muhammad 

 Husain (Makhzan-el-Adwiya, 1770), who specially remarks that its virtues had 

 been discovered by a sect of Christians called Jesuits. He adds that it bears the 

 name of kina-kina. This is its name in the language of the Incas, and it gave 

 origin to the French name quinquina, as given by Condamine originally, and to 

 china in Spanish. The French obtained the bark in 1679, for it is recorded that 

 Louis XIV. purchased a supply from an Englishman of the name of Talbor or 

 Tabor. Talbor, like many of the Native doctors of India to-day, made his 

 reputation and fortune through a fever mixture the chief ingredient of which was 

 quinine. Nothing, however, was known to the botanical world of the plant from 

 which the medicinal bark was procured until 1739, when MM. La Condamine and 

 Jussieu studied it, during an astronomical expedition to South America. The 

 former sent a sample to Linnaeus from Cajanuma, and in consequence in 1742 it was 

 named Cinchona, and in 1753 Linnaeus established the species C. officinaiis- 

 The plant is sometimes now known as uar. f'omiaminea after its discoverer. 

 The first living plant was shown in Europe in 1840, having been raised in 

 Paris from Weddell's Bolivian seed, namely, c. Caiisnya. Thus, briefly, the 

 medicinal bark was discovered in 1640; the plant was named a century later; 

 and still another century later a specimen was grown in the Jardin des Plantes 

 of Paris. 



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