RTJBIACE^.. 159 



The history of the cinchona wouUl bo defective without some account of its 

 introcluctiou into India. In 1839, Dr Royle, the English East India botanist, 

 drew the attention of the home government to the importance of providing a 

 febrifuge for medical practice among the natives, and advocated the intro- 

 duction of the cinchona into India. 



In 1859 the liritish government sent an expedition to South America to 

 procure seeds and plants of all the species possessing commercial value. The 

 party encountered great dithculty and endured great hardships, but secured 

 seeds and living plants, which were taken to England and sent to India, where 

 suitable localities in the mountains were selected, and a successful plantation 

 was commenced. Previous to this, the Dutch East India Company had .sent 

 an agent to South America who had procured seeds, but when the trees came 

 to maturity, they proved to be worthless. Those taken to India and Ceylon 

 were very productive, and they far exceed in value the trees in a native 

 state. 



In 1878 a German company established a plantation in Bolivia, where there 

 are now about 10,000,000 trees under cultivation. Though only a little more 

 than a quarter of a century has ela])sed since the first plantations were com- 

 menced, the barks which supply the markets of the world are nearly all from 

 cultivated trees. 



Chemistry. — The cinchona barks yield to the chemist a number of alkaloids, 

 the principal of Avhich are the following : — 



Quinia, Coq, H24, No, (\. 



Cinchona, C^o, H.24, N.,, O. 



The lowest per cent of alkaloids in the barks of commerce is 2, and the 

 highest 13^. This high per cent is obtained from the C. officinalis, var. lan- 

 ceolata, under cultivation ^ 9 per cent of the 13| is Quinia. 



Quinia and Cinchonia were discovered in 1820 by the chemists Pelletier and 

 Caventon, who secured the prize of 10,000 francs offered by the French 

 Academy of Science. 



Preparation. — The mode of collecting the bark is to cut down the tree, and 

 then strip the bark, after which it is dried in the sun and sewn up in green 

 ox-hides, and exported in large bundles or packages. 



This wa.«;teful mode of collecting the bark is not practiced upon the trees 

 planted in India, but alternate strips are removed ; the wounds are then bound 

 up, and when properly healed the other spaces are stripped, by which means 

 the tree is indefinitely preserved. Trees under cultivation yield barks far 

 richer in alkaloids, and the successive new layers of bark are more and more 

 highly charged with the valuable products. 



Use. — The sulistances yielded by the cinchona barks are ])OAverfully tonic, 

 antiseptic, and antiperiodic, and the bark itself as a whole is highly astringent. 

 Quinine, the sulphate of quinia, contains the properties of the bark in the 

 most concentrated form. 



No substance in the materia medica is of such importance in the healing 

 art where malarial and intermittent fevers prevail. Though it is a specific 

 as a febrifuge, it is administered in all complaints that attack the system at 

 intervals, as neuralgia, rheumatism, etc. 



It has been found that a .-solution of quinine in 20.000 jtarts of water will 

 destroy bacteria. It is believed that malarial fevers are due to the direct 

 introduction into the blood of living organisms. Quinine is suppo.*;ed either 

 to destrov these organisms or to render the condition of the blood unfavorable 

 to their development. 



