The Indians of Peru call the C. trees kina, from whence are derived the names china, quina, etc. But it is not certain that they knew the use of the bark before the arrival of the Spaniards. It is a medicine of great value in the cure of intermittent fevers (see AGUE), and diseases attended with much febrile debility; also in certain forms of neuralgia (q.v.), and other diseases of the nervous system. It seems to have been first imported into Europe in 1039, by the countess Del Oinchon or Chinchon, the wife of the viceroy of Peru, who had been cured of an obstinate intermittent fever by means of it, and upon this account it was named C. bark and countess's powder (putris comilisscr). The Jesuit missionaries afterwards carried it to Rome, and distributed it through their several stations, and thus is acquired the name of Jesuit's bark and powder of the fathers (pelvis patrum). Cardinal Juan de Lugo having been particularly active in recom mending and distributing it, it was also known as Cardinal de Lugo's powder. It attained great celebrity in Spain and Italy, being sold at high prices by the Jesuits, by whom it was lauded as an infallible remedy, while by most of the orthodox physicians it was coldly received, and by the Protestants altogether repudiated. Its mode of action not being well understood, and the cases to which it was applicable not well defined, it seems, in the first instance, to have been emploTed without due discrimination, and to have fallen very much into the hands of empirics. Falling, however, into disuse in Europe, it was again brought into notice by sir Robert Talbor or Talbot, an English man, who brought it to England in 1671, and acquired great celebrity through the cure of intennittents by means of it, and from whom Louis XIV. purchased his secret in 16S9. A pound of bark at that time cost 100 louis-d'or. Talbor seems to have been a
vain and self-seeking man, but who had, nevertheless, the acuteness to discern and systematically to avail himself of the healing virtues of the neglected Jesuits' bark, which lie mixed with other substances, so as to conceal its taste and odor. Soon afterwards, both Morton and Sydenham, the most celebrated English physicians of the age, adopted the new remedy; and its use, from this period, gradually extended, both in England and France, notwithstanding the opposition of the faculty of medicine in the latter country. As it came into general use, it became a most important article of export from Peru; but for a long time, the value of the bark to be procured in New Granada remained unknown; and in order to the maintenance of a commercial monopoly, extraordinary methods were even employed to prevent it from becoming known at a comparatively recent period of Spanish rule in America. The discovery of the alkaloids on which its properties chiefly depend, constitutes a new era in the history of this medicine, and did not take place till the beginning of the present century.
The chief active principles are the two alkaloids, quinine (q.v.) and cinchonine. The latter is not generally present in so large a proportion as the quinine, and does not possess such powerful medicinal properties. When isolated, the alkaloid cinchonia, or cinchonine, has the formula (C401124N,0,), and can be obtained in a crystallized state.
C. bark itself has, in later times, fallen into comparative disuse, owing to the dis covery of the alkaloid quinine, which is now extensively in use in medicine in the form of sulphate or disulphate of quinine, and is given in doses of from one to twenty grains, in almost all the cases to which the bark was supposed to be applicable.