210 NATURE AND LIFE 
by the natives of those countries when the corregidor of 
Loxa, in 1638, administered it for the first time to the 
Countess del Cinchon, the Spanish vice-queen in Peru. 
This lady was attacked by a very obstinate tertian ague, 
which the medicine easily conquered. As soon as this 
wonderful cure was known in the city, the townspeople 
of Lima sent a deputation to the viceroy, entreating him 
to give the new drug to the public. <A large quantity of 
quinine was brought frem Loxa and Cuenga, which the vice- 
queen personally distributed among the inhabitants, and 
which was thenceforth called the countess’s powder. A 
century later, in 1738, La Condamine gave the first com- 
plete description of the tree which furnishes quinine. His 
work served Linnzeus as a basis for determining the char- 
acteristics of the genus, which he called cinchona, in mem- 
ory of the Countess del Cinchon. In 1640, Del Cinchon 
went back to Spain, and his physician, Juan del Vego, 
brought with him a large cargo of the febrifuge bark, which 
he sold for a high price. The Spanish Jesuits soon made 
it the subject of profitable commerce, and in that way it 
entered into the European pharmacopoeia. Yet its employ- 
ment was not at first very general. In 1679 an English 
doctor, named Talbot, prescribed a secret remedy for the 
son of Louis XIV., who suffered from stubborn attacks of 
intermittent fever. The dauphin rapidly recovered his 
health, bought Talbot’s secret for forty-eight thousand 
livres, and granted that physician a life annuity. More- 
over, the remedy, which was merely a tincture of wine of 
quinine, was made public by the monarch’s direction, As 
was the case with tartar-emetic, Peruvian bark gave rise In 
the. schools to long discussions, in which, a singular fact, 
political and religious passions interfered; but quinine 
triumphed over all opposition, and, thanks to the efforts 
of Sydenham, Morton, and Torti, all practitioners were 
soon agreed in acknowledging its beneficial qualities. 

