NATURE 



189 



THURSDAY, DECEMBER 2,0, 18S0 



PERUVIAN BARK 

 Pencvian Bark : a Popular Account of the Introduction 



of Chinchona Cultivation into British India. By 



Clements R. Alarkham, C.B., F.R.S. 1860-1880. 



(London: John Murray, 1880.) 

 " '"T'HE enterprise undertaken by me in 1859 of intro- 



-L ducing the cultivation of Peruvian bark trees into 

 British India and Ceylon is now an assured success.'' 

 With these words Mr. Markham begins his preface, and 

 a perusal of the convenient history he has put together of 

 the gradual steps by which during the past twenty years 

 this success has been reached, enables us to fully share 

 the satisfaction with which they must have been written. 

 Not merely has a cheap supply of febrifuge alkaloids 

 been brought within reach of the fever-haunted population 

 of India, but a new and highly-profitable industry has 

 been opened to the planters of our tropical colonies, and 

 the yield of an inestimable drug placed beyond risk of 

 exhaustion. 



Enthusiasm is in most enterprises essential to success. 

 If a certain tinge of impracticability often accompanies it 

 a moderate e.\perience of human nature disposes us to 

 regard this with a good deal of toleration. We may as 

 well confess at once therefore that the pleasure with which 

 we have studied Mr. Markham's pages would have been 

 greater but for his insistance throughout on two grievances, 

 in neither of which do we find ourselves in any way 

 persuaded by his advocacy. One of these — the other is 

 more serious, and must be adverted to further on — is 

 irritating in inverse proportion to its importance. The 

 names of genera employed in systematic botany are 

 Latinised forms, very arbitrary, and often, it must be 

 allowed, unscholarly in their construction. But they are 

 symbols or dockets under which scientific information 

 can be arranged. If there is one thing about which 

 botanists, of whatever nationality, arc agreed, it is that the 

 docket, having once been promulgated and brought into 

 use, shall not be meddled with. It may be abolished or 

 merged in some other, but being a mere symbol it cannot 

 be tampered with without disturbing all kinds of mechani- 

 cal aids to study, such as indexes and catalogues, and so 

 adding to the worry of life. From a literary point of 

 view the correction of Cinchona into Chinchona may be 

 desirable, but the trouble of having two spellings in circu- 

 lation is too great a price to pay for the mere satisfaction 

 of literary propriety. It cannot be said therefore that 

 this is merely a literary question like such spellings as 

 those of diocess and chymistry affected by the Times, 

 while from a technical point of view it has been already 

 discussed and conclusively decided against Mr. Markham 

 in the pages of this journal. 



The genus Cinchona — as we must still beg leave to call 

 it — includes all the plants at present known to yield 

 quinine and allied alkaloids. It has rather more than 

 thirty species, \ some of which however are medicinally 

 valueless, while the rest vary individually in the amount 

 and character of the alkaloids they yield. The native 

 habitat of the genus is very restricted ; it is only found 

 on the Andes between 10° N. and 19° S. lat., and between 

 Vol. xxni. — No. 583 



2500 and goGo feet of elevation. Besides this the several 

 species are closely limited to particular portions of the 

 general area. 



The native inhabitants seem to have set little store on 

 the febrifugal properties of the cinchonas, and indeed 

 to have been little aware of them except in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Loxa, where a Jesuit was cured in 1600 of a 

 fever at Malacotas by Peruvian bark, and to this day the 

 local prejudice against its use is very strong. In 1638, 

 however, the Countess of Chinchon, wife of the Viceroy 

 of Peru, was cured of intermittent fever by bark sent by 

 the Corrcgidor of Loxa. The remedy, whose reputation 

 was now established, was carried by her to Spain in 1640, 

 and became known as Pulvis comitissce. In 1670 it was 

 sent to Rome by the Jesuits and distributed to members 

 of that order throughout Europe. Hence it came to be 

 called Jesuit's bark, and it is interesting to find that its 

 merits became accordingly a party question between 

 Protestants and Catholics. 



For more than a century (till 1776) the only bark met 

 with in commerce was that brought from the neighbour- 

 hood of Loxa. This was called Quinquina, from the 

 Indian name quina-qtiina, quina meaning bark, and the 

 reduplication the possession of medicinal properties. 

 The plant producing the bark was described by Linnseus 

 under the name of Cinchona officinalis, to be rechristened 

 afterwards by Humboldt and Bonpland Cinchona conda- 

 minca, a change correctly rejected by Mr. Markham, 

 following Sir Joseph Hooker, and, be it remarked, on 

 precisely the same grounds as those on which the rechris- 

 tening of the genus as Chinchona must also be rejected. 



As early as 1735 Ulloa represented to the Spanish 

 Government that the Loxa forests could not long survive 

 the reckless treatment to which even then they were sub- 

 jected. And this was in spite of the intelligent efforts of 

 the Jesuits, who endeavoured to enforce replanting as a 

 religious duty. The Loxa bark, eventually distinguished 

 as Crown bark from being reserved, when other kinds 

 became known, for use in the Royal Pharmacy at Madrid, 

 is represented in old collections of Materia Jvledica, such 

 as that of the College of Physicians, by massive fragments 

 which must have been detached from very old trees. Mr. 

 Markham tells us that it is now only found in commerce 

 in the minutest quills. As the Loxa bark became scarce 

 the search after other supplies of cinchona bark was 

 stimulated. The botanical expedition of Ruiz and Pavon 

 sent by the .Spanish Government in 1777 resulted in the 

 discovery of seven species of Cinchona, yielding gre 

 bark, near Huanuco in Northern Peru. Mutis, another 

 Spanish botanist, believed that he first detected a Cinchona 

 in Columbia in 1772, though a resident in Bogota chal- 

 lenged his claim to priority. 



The well-known " red bark " of the slopes of Chimbor.azo 

 seems to have been known early in the last century, and 

 later to have found its way into European markets, though 

 it was not till 1S57 that the plant yielding it was clearly 

 identified by Dr. Klotzsch. The yellow or Calisaya barks 

 of Bolivia, first discovered by Haer.ke in 1776, did not 

 become of commercial importance till 1820, when quinine, 

 the most important active principle of Peruvian bark 

 having been isolated by the French chemists, Pelletier 

 and Caventou, yellow bark was recognised as richer in it 

 than any other kind. 



