At her instigation the bark was collected for malaria sufferers and later exported to Spain. Native peoples, however, had long used it for medicinal purposes. It is sometimes called Jesuits' bark because of the part the Jesuits played in its dispersal. So successful were the Dutch and English in transplanting cinchona to Java and India that until World War II these countries, especially Java, grew practically the entire commercial supply. The bark of the uprooted tree is beaten loose, peeled by hand, and dried quickly to prevent the loss of alkaloids.
Final extraction is conducted in factories, chiefly in the United States or Europe.
Cinchona is classified in the division Magnoliophyta , class division Magnoliopsida, order Rubiales, family Rubiaceae. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.