CINCHONA CONDAMINEA. LAUREL-LEAVED CINCHONA. 
Class V. PENTANDRIA.— Order I. MONOGYNIA. 
Natural Order, CINCHONACEHC. — THE CINCHONA TRIBE. 
Fig. (a) exhibits a flower cut open; (6) germen and pistil; (c) capsule; (d) section of the same. 
Although it is probable that several species of this important genus afford the Peruvian bark of the 
shops, of these three only are admitted into our national pharmacopoeias, to which the specific names of 
lancifolia, (the condaminea of Humboldt and Bonpland,) oblongifolia, and cordifolia, have been applied, de- 
signating respectively, the pale, the red, and the yellow bark. Twenty-seven species have been described 
by botanists as natives of South America, the Phillipine, the West India, and the South Sea Islands. 
The Cinchona is described by Baron Humboldt as a lofty, handsome, evergreen tree, from thirty to 
forty feet in height, and standing generally single, and exuding, wherever it is wounded, a yellow, astringent 
juice. The trunk is about eighteen feet in height, and fifteen inches in diameter, erect, with a cracked ash- 
coloured bark. The branches are round, in opposite pairs, erect, brachiated, with the younger ones obscurely 
quadrangular at the sides. The leaves are of a bright green, shining, ovate-lanceolate, about three inches 
long, petiolate, with a little pit in the axillas of the nerves, or the under surface, which is filled with an 
astringent aqueous fluid, and having the orifice shut with minute hairs ; they stand on short foot-stalks, one 
sixth of their length, flat above, and convex below ; but the form of the leaf varies extremely, so that no 
specific distinction can be derived from their figure alone. The stipules are two, acute, sericeous, contiguous, 
and caducous. The panicles are terminal, branched, leafy, and trichotomous. The flowers are of a pale rose 
colour, furnished with little bracteas, and are produced in terminal, brachiated, leafy, trichotomous panicles, 
supported on round peduncles and pedicles, that are powdered and silky. The calyx is bell-shaped, globular, 
five-toothed, powdered, and silky, like the peduncles, with the teeth ovate, acute, very short, and contiguous. 
The corolla is somewhat salver-shaped, longer than the calyx, with the tube obscurely five-angled, silky, 
frequently of a rose-colour ; the limb wheel-shaped, with linear-lanceolate segments, much shorter than the 
tube, white, and woolly above. The anthers are twice the length of the free portion of the filaments. The 
germen is globular, with an erect style, and bifid stigma. The capsule is ovate, woody, striated longitudinally, 
crowned with the calycinal teeth, two-celled, many-seeded, oppositely twice furrowed, and opening from the 
base to the apex with two valves. 
Cinchona bark appears to have been long known as a medicine in Peru; but we have no satisfactory ac- 
count at what period, nor by what means, the febrifuge virtues of this valuable remedy were first discovered. 
Some say, a patient had been cured of an intermittent fever by having drank the waters of a lake, which 
had acquired a bitter taste from Cinchona trees which had lain in them ; others, that a lion had cured him- 
self of the ague by instinctively chewing Cinchona bark, and had directed the attention of the Indians to 
this tree. “That animals,” observes Humboldt, in his c Dissertation on the Cinchona Forests of South 
America,’ “have taught men, is a very common form of the traditions of nations. The valuable antidote 
Bijuco del guaco, a plant described by Mutis, which is related to the Mikania, and has been erroneously 
confounded with the Ayapana of Brasil, is also said to have attracted the notice of the Indians, as is affirmed 
of the Falco serpentarius, by the Falco guaco of New Granada fighting with serpents. However, that the 
great American lion, without mane, Felis concolor, should be subject to the ague, is just as bold an hypo- 
thesis as the assertion of the inhabitants of the pestilential valley, Gualla Bamba, near the town of Quito,) 
that even the vultures, Vultur aura, in their neighbourhood, were subject to that disorder.” 
“The story, so often copied, respecting the Countess Chinchon, vice-queen of Peru, is probably still more 
doubtful than it is generally supposed to be. There certainly was a Count Chinchon, Don GeronimoFernan- 
dez de Cabrera Bobadella v Mendoza, who was Viceroy of Lima, from 1629 to 1639. It is very probable 
that his wife, after her return to Spain, in 1640, was the first who introduced the Cinchona bark into Europe. 
In Loxa, an old tradition is current, that the Jesuits, at the felling of the wood, had distinguished, 
according to the custom of the country, the different kinds of trees by chewing their barks, and that on such 
occasions they had taken notice of the considerable bitterness of the cinchona. There being always medical 
practitioners among the missionaries, it is said they had tried an infusion of the cinchona in the tertian 
ague, a complaint which is very common in that part of the country.” 
Cinchona bark is stripped from the trunk and branches in the dry season, from September to No- 
vember ; it is dried by exposure to the sun, and after being imported into Europe is sorted for sale. It is 
brought to this country in chests, each of which contains from one hundred to two hundred pounds weight 
of bark, mixed with dust, and other impurities. 
Qualities and Chemical Properties. — Few vegetable substances have undergone so many 
analyses, by the most eminent chemists, as the different varieties of Peruvian bark. The basis of all of them 
is woody fibre, combined with which are various principles capable of being extracted by different solvents. 
The taste of all is more or less bitter and astringent. Boiling water extracts all their active principles, 
affording a solution of a pale brown colour ; this infusion is transparent when hot, but on cooling becomes 
turbid, and a precipitate is deposited, which is soluble in alcohol. The decoction has a very astringent 
