6 USE OF BAEK PEOMOTED BY JESUITS. Chap. I. 



his Countess, bringing with her a quantity of the healing 

 bark, was thus tlie first person to introduce this invaluable 

 medicine into Europe.^ Hence it was sometimes called 

 Countess's bark, and Countess's powder. Her physician, 

 Juan de Vega, sold it at Seville for one hmidred reals the 

 pound. In memory of this great service Linnaeus named the 

 genus which yields it ChincTiona, and afterwards the lady 

 Ana's name was still further immortalized in the great family 

 of ChincJionacece, which, together with Chinchonce, includes 

 ipecacuanhas and coffees. By modern writers the first h has 

 usually been dropj^ed, and the word is now almost invariably, 

 but most erroneously, spelt Cincliona. 



After the cure of the Countess of Chinchon, the Jesuits 

 Avere the gi-eat promoters of the introduction of bark into 

 Europe. In 1639, as the last act of his viceroyalty, her hus- 

 band 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, accom- 

 panied by the Jesuit Acufia, who wrote a most valuable 

 account of the voyage.* From that time the missionaries of 

 Acuna's fraternity continued to penetrate into the forests 

 bordering on the upper waters of the Amazons, and to fonn 

 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 I 

 result of its patronage by the Jesuits that its use should have 



3 Sebastian Badus asserts that bark 

 was brought to Ak-ala de Henares as 

 early as 1(532. — Hiiiiiboldt's A&iiecU, ii. 



p. 268. 



* I translated and edited Acufia's 

 Vtiyage for the Hakliiyt Society in 1859. 



