38 THE APOTHECARIES' GARDEN 



Markham, and those who worked with him, 

 after adventures and dangers, all recorded in 

 his book, Peruvian Bark, succeeded in bringing 

 plants and seeds to India. That was the 

 beginning of the Cinchona forests in the Neil- 

 gherry Hills, Sikkim, Burma and Ceylon. 

 Quinine is now within reach of all. Over- 

 worked women in a hospital out-patient room, 

 who beg for " another bottle of Queen Anne 

 Mixture," can have it. It has banished ague 

 from England, although the mosquito remains, 

 a mischievous messenger, ever ready to carry 

 the poison if it can find it in the blood of some 

 returned traveller. Those who have read 

 Daniel Defoe's Tour Through the Eastern Coun- 

 tries in 1722, know the scourge ague once was 

 in England, and could be again if it were not 

 for the " tree bearing Jesuit's bark." 



In India it must have saved many millions 

 of lives. If the tree had been known to 

 ancient Rome and Greece, it is impossible to 

 say what the course of European history would 

 have been, for the increasing weakness of both 

 nations, with the desolation of places like the 

 Pontine Marshes, was due to the increasing 

 ravages of malaria. 1 



When Evelyn was visiting the Garden, other 

 matters were occupying the minds of the 

 Apothecaries. 



James II had carried the doctrine of the 

 divine right of kings to its logical conclusion. 

 He had changed the heads of colleges at 



1 The want of sufficient quinine was producing disastrous 

 results at the end of the Great War. The situation was saved by 

 the Dutch handing over at a moderate price the entire product of 

 the Java plantation. 



