Observations and Experiments on Peruvian Bark. 29 



me no doubt founded in fiction. It has long been esteemed a 

 valuable medicine in Peru, where it is said the natives have 

 adopted its use, from observing that animals recur to it. Be 

 the source of its first employment what it may, it was not used 

 by Europeans until the year 1640, when the countess Cin- 

 chon, wife of the Spanish viceroy, was cured of the ague 

 by means of it, and hence the derivation of its name, cin- 

 chona. As frequently occurs on the introduction of any new 

 remedy, considerable noise was made, and opposition raised 

 against it by several eminent physicians ; but when submit- 

 ted to proper experiments, its efficacy soon suppressed the 

 groundless clamor which had been too hastily excited. 



The principle, says Dr. Paris, on which the tonic and 

 febrifuge properties of bark depend, has ever been a fruitful 

 source of controversy. Deschamps attributed it to cinchon- 

 ate of lime. Westering considered tannin as the active 

 principle ; while M. Seguin assigned all the virtues to the 

 principle which precipitates gallic acid. Fabroni concluded 

 from his experiments, that the febrifuge power of the bark 

 did not belong exclusively and essentially to the astringent, 

 bitter, or to any other individual principle; since the quantity 

 of these would necessarily be increased by long boiling ; 

 whereas the virtues of the bark are notoriously diminished 

 by protracted ebullition. 



Perhaps no vegetable substance, underwent so many anal- 

 yses, by the most distinguished chemists of Europe, as the 

 cinchona ; and yet so little positive knowledge was obtained 

 of its true constituents, and such was the very obscure con- 

 dition of our information of the active principle of cinchona, 

 when the scrutinizing, critical and successful researches of 

 Pelletier and Caventou, detected the existence of two salifi- 

 able bases, in peculiar states of combination, in the different 

 species of cinchona. The medical profession is therefore 

 indebted to these intelligent and enterprising chemists, for 

 one of the most valuable additions ever made to the materia 

 medica. 



Among all the late discoveries in vegetable chemistry, 

 there is none which claims so much attention from extensive 

 usefulness, as that of quinine. This principle contains all 

 the tonic and febrifuge properties of Peruvian bark, in their 

 most concentrated state. By the substitution of this prepa- 

 ration for the crude bark, the physician can conveniently ad- 

 minister it to the most delicate constitution, in an eligible form, 



