NAT. ORDER. CINCHONACE^, 29 
stitution. The first class precipitates astringents, but not gelatine ; 
the second precipitates gelatine, but not astringents ; the third pre- 
cipitates both gelatine and astringents ; there are also some barks 
which precipitate neither gelatine nor astringents ; but they are 
not considered by botanists as properly belonging to the genus cin~ 
cliona. Each of the three first classes are said to be capable of 
curino- intermittants. 
It had been long a desideratum among pharmaceutical chem- 
ists to discover in the barks the particular substance to which the 
febrifying property might be ascribed ; and in pursuit of this object, 
Laubert of Paris, Strenss of Moscow, and Gomez of Lisbon, pub- 
lished, about the same time, the result of their observation; but the 
French chemists were most successful ; they obtained a substance, 
which they recognised as that to which M. Gomez had given the 
name of cinchonine, and they evidently proved more successful in 
arriving at the correct properties of this most valuable plant. The 
cinchonine was obtained by operating on the cinchona condamina, or 
grey hark of the French botanists. The cinchona cordifolia (the cin- 
chona officinalis of our Colleges, the yellow-hark of the French) was 
next subject to analysis, and from this was obtained an alkali, in 
many points resembling the cinchonine, but still differing in many 
important ones, sufficiently to prevent their being confounded : this 
alkali was called Quinine, The examination of the red-hark ( cin- 
chona ohlongifolia ) followed ; and " it was an interesting question," 
says M. Magendie, "to determine whether this species, considered 
by many medical men as eminently febrifuge, contained quinine cin- 
chonine, or a third variety of alkali. The result was, that they ob- 
tained, not only a treble quantity of cinchojiine, (in all respects like 
that obtained from the grey-hark) but also nearly twice as much 
quinine as the same quantity of yellow bark had yielded. From 
ulterior experiments, made on large masses, it appears that quinine 
and cinchonine exist in all three species of bark, but the cinchonine 
is in greater quantity than the quinine in the grey-bark, while in 
the yellow-bark, the quinine greatly predominates." 
