47 



Peru, lay sick of a fever in Lima, and there was sent, also from 

 Malacotas, a parcel of quina-quina to the Countess's physician, with 



instructions for its use. It was prescribed for her, and the result 

 was a perfect cure. In 1G40 the Countess returned to Europe, carry- 

 ing with her a quantity of this most precious remedy. Hence it 

 came to be called Jesuits' bark by some, and Countess's hark or 

 Countess's powder by others. It was the Countess who first intro- 

 duced it to the Old World, and in her honour Linnaeus named the 

 genus which yields it, chinchona. The fame of it spread throughout 

 the world ; it performed miracles, and among them may be reckoned 

 the planting of patristic Christianity in China. A century and a 

 half ago there was hardly a province in China where a Catholic 

 church did not exist — there was a church within the precincts of the 

 Celestial palace itself — and all those churches may be said to have 

 been built on Peruvian bark. The Emperor's life had been saved by 

 it, and in gratitude to the French Jesuits who introduced it to 

 China, the Emperor allowed them to build as many churches as they 

 pleased throughout the empire. Of course, the usual difficulties 

 arose against the new agent of such mighty cures. France, Spain, 

 Rome, and England, united their noted medical men in its condem- 

 nation ; and among the common people it was sufficient for the 

 Protestant to decry a thing which the Jesuits patronized. After 

 much angry disputation, and many experiments, the final discovery 

 Df quinine, and the completion of its chemical history, was made by 

 the French chemists, Pelletier and Caventon, in 1820. Further 

 discoveries were made nine years later by Pelletier, and the organic 

 constituents of chinchona bark found to be — quina, chinchonia, 

 iricina, quinidia, chinchonidia, quinic acid, tannic acid, kinovic acid, 

 chinchona red, a yellow colouring matter, a green fatty matter, starch, 

 jum, and lignin. I wish all the others had been as easily understood 

 is the last two or three, but I am not responsible for those learned 

 berms. I need not describe quinine, or say anything of its usefulness, 

 3r the multitude of circumstances under which it is applied. They 

 ire well known. The zone of the chinchonse extends from 10 deg. 

 N". to 17 deg. S. latitude, following the bend of the Andes, and 

 describing a line of probably nearly 2000 miles. I have seen them 

 it the sources of the Meta, about 8 cleg. N". ; also on the great Quindio 

 ranges, and they have been specially observed at their extreme 

 southern end by Mr. Markham, a young and ardent traveller, who 

 svas employed by the Indian Government to transplant them from 

 their principal native regions to the Neilgherry hills. It is to Mr. 

 Markham' s report we are indebted for a minute and able description 

 sf these trees, and the localities where their most valuable species 

 ire to be found. They flourish in a cool and equable temperature, 

 jn the slopes and in the valleys and ravines of the mountains, never 

 lescending below an elevation of 2,500ft., and ascending as high as 

 3000 ft. above thes ea level. The chinchonas, when in good soil and 

 ander favourable circumstances, become large forest trees — at the 



