Chap. I. THEIR REPUGNANCE TO ITS USE. 3 



at about the same time. Thus au interval of only forty 

 years intervened between the pacification of Peru and the 

 discovery of its most valuable product. 



It may be added, however, that though the Indians were 

 aware of the febrifugal qualities of this bark, they attached 

 little importance to them, and this may be another reason 

 for the lapse of time which occurred before the knowledge 

 was imparted to the Spaniards. Eeferring to this circum- 

 stance La Condamine says, '• Nul n'est saint dans son pays.^' 

 This indifference to, and in many cases even prejudice against 

 the use of the Peruvian bark, amongst the Indians, is very 

 remarkable. Poeppig, MTiting in 1830, says that in the 

 Peruvian province of Huanuco the people, who are much 

 subject to tertian agues, have a strong repugnance to its 

 use. The Indian thinks that the cold north alone permits 

 the use of fever-bark ; he considers it as verj^ heating, and 

 therefore an unfit remedy in complaints which he believes to 

 arise from inflammation of the blood.* Humboldt also notices 

 this repugnance to using the bark amongst the natives ; 

 and ]\L.'. Spruce makes the same observation with respect to 

 the peoj^le of Ecuador and New Granada.^ He says that 

 they refer all diseases to the influence of either heat or cold ; 

 and, confounding cause and effect, they suppose aU fevers to 

 proceed from heat. They justly believe bark to be very 

 heating, and hence their prejudice against its use in fevers, 

 which they treat wdth frescos or cooling drinks. Even in 

 Guayaquil the prejudice against quinine is so strong that, 

 when a physician administers it, he is obliged to call it by 

 another name. 



In about 1630 Don Juan Lopez de Canizares, the Spanish 

 Corregidor of Loxa, being ill with an intermittent fever, an 

 Indian of Malacotas is said to have revealed to him the 



* Poeppig, Eeisi'. * jVIr. Spruce's Report, p. 2"). 



B 2 



