260 PHARMACOPEIAL DRUGS 



ment of malignant fevers common to his locality and 

 climate. Daniel Rolander, a Swede, became interested 

 in the drug, and "in consequence of a valuable con- 

 sideration," purchased from the slave Quassi a knowl- 

 edge of the drug composing his remedy. Rolander 

 returned to Stockholm in 1756, when he introduced the 

 drug to Europe. In 1760 or 1761 Carol. Gust. Dahl- 

 berg, an officer of the Dutch army and an eminent 

 botanist, a pupil of Linnaeus (385), returned to Sweden 

 from Surinam, where he too had become acquainted 

 with the slave Quassi, and through kindness to him had 

 so gained his affection that he revealed not only the 

 composition of his secret remedy, but even showed to 

 him the tree from which the drug was derived. Dahl- 

 berg procured specimens of the root, flowers and leaves 

 of the tree, preserving them in alcohol, and presented 

 them to Linnaeus, who named the wood Lignum quas- 

 sia, in honor of the slave, and established a new genus 

 for the plant, which he named Quassia amara. The drug 

 was brought to the notice of the medical profession by 

 Linnaeus' lectures on materia medica, as well as through 

 a dissertation written under his direction, in 1763, by 

 one of his pupils, Carolus M. Blom. Rather more than 

 a questioning, however, seems to exist, as to the exact 

 plant employed by the slave Quassi. As pointed out 

 by Dr. Wright, the leaves pictured in the Linnaean 

 Dissertation belonged to another species than the 

 Quassia amara, an error corrected by the younger 

 Linnaeus. 



In this connection it may be stated that Philippe 

 Fermin, a French physician and traveler in Surinam, 

 spelled the name of the slave Coissi, questioning some- 

 what the fact of his having discovered the uses of the 



