Litchfield enquirer., 1857-08-13
The History of Peruvian Bark.

Saffron is drug now struggling hard for life against dccadence and neglect. We have other vegetable medicines that have wrcstled through even tougher strife to save them selves from being burked and buried alive by selfish monopollsts and sceptical physicians
 Let us take quiniue or Peruvian bark to H. lustrate the progress of Economic Botany. Kina-k -kina, or the bark of barks, is the native name which the Spaniards heard from the
 mouth of the South American aborgnes ; they wrote it china-china, while the French al- tered it to quin-quina. In any case, the ety. mology of qninine is far easier to trace than the history of the substance /
 l AS authors relate that the Arab goats re- | vealed to man the virtues of coffee by their fantastic bounds and gestures after browsing on the poetic berry, so, it would appear we arc indebted for knowledge of the medicinal powers of Peruvian bark to the cure of sick 1 animals who had drunk the water of pond in which the trunks of kina-kna trees lay macera- 1 ting. Other authorities, with manly pride, preferring to attribute so important a discovery to human agency, refer it to feyerish Indian, who was relieved in consequence of quenching his thirst by draughts of water similarly satu- rated with the principles of quinine Another
 
 | session of the same secret appears to have communicated it to noble Spanard, the Cor l regidor of Loxa Don Juan Lopez de Canni- i zares, whom he thus cured Of an intermittent fever The Corrcgidor in turn galantly en- ployed the remedy at Lima, in lG38, in rescu- Ing from fever the Countess del Cinchon, the wife ot the vceroy.
 The lady, on Ter return to Spain, loudly T -E, I,l after her, Pulvis CcmitiS>ce or the countess's powder and her Latinised name, Chiuchona, was cousecrated to botanical nomenclature. During her stay in America, the grateful pa tient gratuitously distributed, to all who were | suffering from fever in the viceroyalty of Lima, the remedy which had re-establiShed her own health. So far, all went smoothly with Peru | vian bark.
 But, at her departure, she placed in the hands of the Jesuits who resided in the Span ish possessions, a certain provision of the medi- camcnt, in order that they might bring it into general use from which circumstance it ac- qured the name of Jcsuits' powder, or Jesuits' bark. The reverend fathers prudently deter mined to turn the charitable intentions of the yicequeen of Lima, to profitable commercial account. They enriched themselves by their mercantile dealings but were very far from spreading the knowledge they had obtained through the generous confidence of the count css. Instead of accurately describing the tree whose mere castof clothes they were selling at all enormous profit, they prevented compc tion in their lucrative business by refusing tc furnish hotansts with any precise data which might help them to distinguish, recognize, or class, the C!nchora plants.
 As the bark-trceS were at first found only in the environs of Loxa, south of the equator the Jesuts dccl;.rrH hat they could not exist in other re,:i,us C. America or, if they did exist, that th,y could possess no iebrfngal virtue hcy''.'l the province of l4oXa. They got the pope to trace a line, which was called the Popc's line, on the map of America, be- yond which ro Cinchora might, should or wonld grow. The Jesuts' agents and cores ponderts in Spain had received their orders : and the public and even the government, were long made the tla}es. The commercial houses in Spain" sass Humboldt, "who fer half a ccntnry had retained the monopoly of Loxa bark, tried hard to appreciate that of New Grenada and Southern Peru. They found complaisant botanlsts who, by raising varieties to the rank of species, proved that tLc barkS of pcru were specifically different from those which grew round Santa Fe. Medical men followed the rope's example by drawing lines of dtmarcation on the map, and maintained
 that no effective bark could grow beyond a certain degree of latitude in the northern hcn,-
 sphere.
 So great was the influence of ths mercan- tile trick, that, at Cadz, by royal order, they burnt a large quantity of the best orange bark, gathered at the kings expense, while al! the Spanish military hospitals were suffering from a scarcity of the precious drug portion of the bark devoted to the flames was secretly purchased at Cadz by some English merchants and sold in London at very high price 7 Thus, for more than century, Europe obtained Peruvian bark only through the medium ot
 Spanish commerce directed by the Jesnts.
 The consequences was, that some doctors re :. iected it. because it was namcless novelty shrouded in mystery, while the English physi clans would have nothing to do with a powder prepared by the diabolical art of the Jusuits for the purpose of killing heretics instead O j. curing them of fever. Nevertheless, the use O bark was spread in France by an Englishman after whom it was called Talbot's Remedy, al D though scorned by the French faculty The y benefit derived from it by Louis the Fourteenth was sufficient to bring it into fashion, although $ $ sold at enormous prices. The king purchased the secret, for the laudable purpose of giving :, a the public the benefit of it. To the utter as r tonlshment of every body, it turned out thai 5 the Remede de PAnglais was nothing nor, s {. than the powder of quin-quina administered il U way to ensure its activity.
 i; We are apt to mistake our vocation in look + ing out of the way for occasions to eSercis, ' + great and rare virtues, and by stepping ove1 + the ordinary ones which lie directly in the roat -- h.fnre us When we read we fancv wa co,Ii