History.— The virtues of the bark of what was afterward known as the cinchona-tree were discovered by the Jesuits in Peru about the year 1600. Prior to that date the Indians evidently knew that it had remedial powers, but they did not use it to any extent. In 1638 the Countess of Chinchon, whose husband, Don Luis Geron imo Fernandez de Cabrera Bobadilla y Mendoza, was viceroy of Peru, was cured of an intermit tent fever by the use of this bark administered by her physician, Don Juan de Vega, on re quest of Don Francisco Lopez de Cafiizares, corregidor of Loxa. Upon her return to Spain in 1640 the countess carried a supply of the bark with her, and through her it became known to the world. It was very fitting that 100 years later Linnaeus should name the genus of trees bearing this bark for the countess — Cin chona (Linnaeus erred in spelling; it should have been Chinchona).
The actual discovery and isolation of qui nine is to be ascribed to the French chemists Pelletier and Caventon in 1820, although Gomez, a Portuguese, succeeded in isolating the febri fuge principle, which was practically quinine, in 1816. Sulphate of quinine was first made in America in 1823, and the lion ,e of Powers and Wcightman, which was founded five years be fore this date, was undoubtedly the first to manufacture it for sale. Until about 1850 the only source of supply was found in the trees growing wild on the eastern slopes of the Andes from Colombia southward to Bolivia, and as quinine had become so valuable a remedy the world over, the native forests near enough to shipping ports to be economically available were almost exhausted so great had become the de mand, for cinchona bark. The price had reached about VO per ounce. The Dutch, knowing that they had in Java the soil, climate, altitude and temperature almost identical with those in the Peruvian Andes, determined to se cure trees or seeds and try to cultivate it there.
(Cinchona requires an altitude of 5,000 to 7,000 feet, tropical temperature, without much vari ation, from 100 to 200 inches of rain a year, and a volcanic soil). The British government made the same attempt in India, but with poor results, because the same conditions of soil and rain do not prevail; and after about 50 years' endeavoring to raise cinchona in India and Cey lon, there only remain a few gardens owned by the government, the product of which is con sumed in the army and among the natives, to whom it is sold through the post office at cost. The variety Cinchona succirubra, yielding cin chonidine, succeeds well in India.
The Dutch experiment, however, proved to be very successful and remunerative, although it involved almost insurmountable obstacles, loss of years of time and lives of earnest working scientists. The trees now thrive better even than their Peruvian ancestors, for the congenial environment found in Java, together with the methods of cultivation discovered by the Dutch, the most faithful of whom has been Van Leersum, government director of Cinchona undertakings, gave yields of as high as 10 per cent quinine sulphate, while an average of 2 to 5 per cent was a fair yield of the Peruvian trees. The annual average export of the Java plantations is 16,500,000 pounds of bark.
There are now thriving plantations in Bolivia and Colombia and Ecuador as well as in Peru, and with the modern methods of strip ping the bark have met successfully the com petition of the Java product. Consult Mc Gilchrist, A. C., Quinine and Its Salts' (Cal cutta 1911) ; United States Public Health Serv ice Report No. 175, Prophylaxis for Malaria> (Washington 1914).