Chap. I. DISCOVERY OF QUININE. 17 



times to discover the actual healing princi[)le in the bark, 

 before success was finally attained. The first trial which is 

 worthy of attention was made in 1779 by tlie chemists Buguct 

 and Cornette, who recognised the existence of an essential 

 salt, a resinous and an earthy matter in quinquina bark. 

 In 1790 Fourcroy discovered the existence of a colouring 

 matter, afterwards called chinchona red, and a Swedish doctor 

 named Westring, in 1800, believed that he had discovered 

 the active principle in quinquina bark. In 1802 tlie French 

 chemist Armand Seguin undertook the bark trade on a large 

 scale, and found it necessary to study the means of discover- 

 ing good barks, and distinguishing them from bad ones. He 

 found that the best quinquina bark was precipitated by 

 tannin, while the bad was not precipitated by that substance. 

 In 1803 another chemist found a crystalline substance in the 

 bark which he called " sel essentiel febrifuge" but it was 

 nothing more than the combination of lime with an acid 

 which was named quinie add. lieuss, a Russian chemist, in 



1815, was the first to give a tolerable analysis of quinquina 

 bark ; and about the same time Dr. Duncan of Edinburgh 

 suggested that a real substance existed as a febrifugal prin- 

 ciple. Dr. Gomez, a surgeon in the Portuguese navy, in 



1816, was the first to isolate this febrifugal principle hinted 

 at by Dr. Duncan, and he called it chinc]io7iine.^ 



But the final discovery of quinme is due to the French 

 chemists Pelletier and Caventou, in 1820. They considered 

 that a vegetable alkaloid, analogous to morphine and strych- 

 nine, existed in quinquina bark ; and they afterwards dis- 

 covered that the febrifugal principle was seated in two alka- 

 loids, separate or together, in the different kinds of bark, called 

 quinine and chincJionine, with the same virtues, which, however, 

 were much more powerful in quhiine. It was believed that in 



^ Briquet, p. 22. 



