Democratic Sentinel, Volume 1, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 October 1877 — The Discovery of Quinine [ARTICLE]

The Discovery of Quinine

The discovery of the medical properties of cinchona bark bark is enveloped in great obscurity. All that we know about it for certain is this: Before the year 1638—that is to say, one hundred aud fifty years subsequent to the discovery ot America—not even the Spaniards were acquainted with the febrifuge qualitie. of cinchona bark; but in this year, or thereabouts, the counhss del Cinchon, the wife of the Spanish viceroy of Peru, was cured of a violent intermittent fever by drinking an infusion of the bark, and this led to its introduction into Europe. Were the natives themselves acquainted with it? Humboldt answers this question very positively in the negative, and refers the discovery to the Jesuit missionaries, who, being in the habit of tasting the bark of every tree they hewed down, at length discovered the precious febrifuge. Other authors of repute contend that the virtues of cinchona bark were known to the Indians long before the advent of the Spaniards; but the question again arises how they first became acquainted with its properties. To account for this the ridiculous tale has been invented that certain animals, while laboring under fever, happened to gnaw the bark of one of the cinchona trees, and were cured forthwith. Far mire probable is it that some cinchona trees having been laid prostrate by the tempests in a pool of water, and the latter becoming charged with the medicinal principle, some person laboring under fever drank cf this water, was cured, and published the result. But however this may be, it is certain that the remedy first became popularized in Europe through the agency of Count del Cinchon, viceroy of Peru, whose wife, as we have said, was cured of intermittent fever by its administration. The new remedy, however, was badly received in France and Italy. The faculty set their faces against it. Physicians who dared prescribe its use, were persecuted, and it was only the patronage of Louis XIV which ultimately rendered it popular in France. This monarch, suffering from intermittent fever, was cured by an English empiric named Talbot, by means of a secret remedy. This was no other than cinchona bark. Louis XIV purchased the secret for the sum of 48,000 livres, and bestowed yearly a pension of 2.000 livres on the Englishman, besides giving him letters of nobility. Three years subsequently the remedy was published. It was a highly concentrated vinous tincture of cinchona bark. Cinchoni trees grow in the densest forests of Peru. The task of discovering them, removing their bark and conveying the latter to the place of export, is troublesome, difficult and dangerous. In these forests there are no roads.— Frightful precipices intersect the path of the cascarillero, or bark gath Ter, across which it is difficult to pass, even while unembarrassed by a load. So soon as the treasure of barks has been secured these difficulties and dangers proportionately increase, so that the comparatively low price at which cinchona may be procured is in itself a matter of surprise.—Cassell’s New Pooular Educator.