MANUAL OF THE nIlAGIRI DISTRICT. 551 



It is an uLiscitled point whether or not the therapeutic proper- CH. XXX. 

 ties of this bark were known to the Indians before the arrival of chinch()na 

 the Spaniards, though the balance of evidence is in favour of Culture, 

 this assumption. The name is Indian,^ *' quina-quina/' " bark _^ij^vTr„ 

 of bark." To the Countess of Chinchon, the wife of a Viceroy of modicinal 

 of Peru, and her Jesuit friends is the world indebted for the P^-^rf'-^ics. 

 introduction of this inestimable febrifuge into Europe in 1640, 

 It was long known as " Countess' powder " and " Jesuit's bark," 

 and later as " Cardinal's bark ;" hence arose the prejudices of 

 Protestants against its use- 



A century elapsed before the genus of the quina tree was —by wiiom 

 established by Linnjeus (1742), who paid a just tribute to the '^*'^'^''''^'^- 

 Countess' memory by naming it after her. Nor has her service 

 to humanity been forgotten by his followers, who have extended 

 the name to the whole family of allied plants. He knew but 

 two species. One of these, the C. officinalis, however, had been 

 previously (1838) described by Dr. La Condamine, one of the 

 members of the French expedition to South America, despatched 

 in 1735 to measure an arc of a degree near Quito; the other 

 members wei'e Godin, Bouguer, and the celebrated botanist 

 Joseph de Jussieu. Jussieu spent thirty-four years in prosecuting 

 his investigations in South America, but he failed in his attempts 

 to forward young chinchona plants to Europe. Seeds of C. calisaya 

 were sent to the Jardin des Plantes by Dr. Weddell in 1846. 

 They were procured from Bolivia. The plants which sprung of 

 these seeds were the first grown in Europe.^ 



Dr. King remarks : — 



"The species found in the region between 10° N. and the 

 equator (the barks of New Granada) wci'c described by Mutis in the 

 last century and more recently by Karsten in his Flora Oolomhice. 

 Mutis' notes remained in manuscript until 1867, when Mr. Clement 

 Markham succeeded in unearthing and printing them, and both his 

 notes and drawings have still more recently been published at Paris by 

 M. Triana in his Nouvelles Etudes sur les Quinquinas. The cinchonas 

 of the region between the line and 14° S. (the barks of Ecuador 

 and Northern Peru) were first examined by Ruiz and Pavon, 

 and a magnificent work founded on Pavon's specimens was published 

 by Mr. J. E. Howard in 1862 ; while those indigenous in the region 

 from the fourteenth parallel of South latitude to the exti*emity of the 

 zone in 20° S. were described by M. Weddell in his splendid monograph 

 published at Paris in 1849." 



Fears had long existed that the bark supply from South Threatened 



America would fail owing to the wanton destruction of the *f ''"''® ^^ 

 " American 



■ supplies of 



1 Markham's Travels. bark-. 



- The first jolant grown in Java was one of these. It died shortly after arrival, 



but a numerous progeny has arisen from a cutting made from it. 



