Early references The
febrifugal properties of bark from trees now known to be in the genus
Cinchona were used by many South American cultures prior to European contact.
Jesuits played a key role in the transfer of remedies from the
New World. The traditional story connecting
Cinchona species with malaria treatment was first recorded by Italian physician
Sebastiano Bado in 1663. It tells of the wife of
Luis Jerónimo de Cabrera, 4th Count of Chinchón and
Viceroy of Peru, who fell ill in
Lima with a tertian fever. A Spanish governor advised a traditional remedy, which resulted in a miraculous and rapid cure. The countess then supposedly ordered a large quantity of the bark and took it back to Europe. Bado claimed to have received this information from an Italian named Antonius Bollus, who was a merchant in Peru. Clements Markham identified the countess as Ana de Osorio, but this was shown to be incorrect by Haggis. Spanish physician and botanist
Nicolás Monardes wrote of a New World bark powder used in Spain in 1574, and another physician, Juan Fragoso, wrote of bark powder from an unknown tree in 1600 that was used for treating various ills. Both identify the sources as trees that do not bear fruit and have heart-shaped leaves; they were suggested to have been referring to
Cinchona species. The name
quina-quina or
quinquina was suggested as an old name for
Cinchona used in Europe and based on the native name used by the
Quechua people which means 'bark of barks'. Italian sources spelt
quina as "
cina", which was a source of confusion with
Smilax from China. Haggis argued that
qina and Jesuit's bark actually referred to
Myroxylon peruiferum, or Peruvian balsam, and that this was an item of importance in Spanish trade in the 1500s. Over time, the bark of
Myroxylon may have been adulterated with the similar-looking bark of what is now known as
Cinchona. Gradually, the adulterant became the main product that was the key therapeutic ingredient used in malarial therapy. The bark was included as
Cortex Peruanus in the
London Pharmacopoeia in 1677.
Economic significance , 1706 The "fever tree" was finally described carefully by astronomer
Charles Marie de la Condamine, who visited
Quito in 1735 on a quest to measure an
arc of the meridian. The species he described,
Cinchona officinalis, however, was found to be of little therapeutic value. The first living plants seen in Europe were
C. calisaya plants grown at the
Jardin des Plantes from seeds collected by
Hugh Algernon Weddell from
Bolivia in 1846.
José Celestino Mutis, physician to the Viceroy of Nueva Granada, Pedro Messia de la Cerda, gathered information on cinchona in
Colombia from 1760 and wrote a manuscript,
El Arcano de la Quina (1793), with illustrations. He proposed a Spanish expedition to search for plants of commercial value, which was approved in 1783 and was continued after his death in 1808 by his nephew Sinforoso Mutis. As demand for the bark increased, the trees in the forests began to be destroyed. To maintain their monopoly on cinchona bark, Peru and surrounding countries began outlawing the export of cinchona seeds and saplings beginning in the early 19th century. The colonial European powers eventually considered growing the plant in other parts of the tropics. The French mission of 1743, of which de la Condamine was a member, lost their cinchona plants when a wave took them off their ship. The
Dutch sent
Justus Hasskarl, who brought plants that were then cultivated in Java from 1854. English explorer Clements Markham went to collect plants that were introduced in
Sri Lanka and the Nilgiris of southern India in 1860. The main species introduced were
C. succirubra, or red bark, (now
C. pubescens) as its sap turned red on contact with air, and
Cinchona calisaya. The alkaloids quinine and cinchonine were extracted by
Pierre Joseph Pelletier and
Joseph Bienaimé Caventou in 1820. Two more key alkaloids, quinidine and cinchonidine, were later identified and it became a routine in quinology to examine the contents of these components in assays. The yields of quinine in the cultivated trees were low and time was needed to develop sustainable methods to extract bark. In the meantime,
Charles Ledger and his native assistant
Manuel Incra Mamani collected another species from Bolivia. Mamani was caught and beaten by Bolivian officials, leading to his death, but Ledger obtained seeds containing high levels of quinine. These seeds were offered to the British, who were uninterested, leading to the rest being sold to the Dutch. The Dutch saw their value and multiplied the stock. The species later named
Cinchona ledgeriana yielded 8 to 13% quinine in bark grown in Dutch Indonesia, which effectively outcompeted the British Indian production which focused on a range of alkaloids other than quinine. Only later did the English see the value and sought to obtain the seeds of
C. ledgeriana from the Dutch. In the 19th century, the British had established cinchona plantations in India from seeds they smuggled out of Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, which were mass manufactured into pills and tablets used by imperial soldiers.
Francesco Torti used the response of fevers to treatment with
Cinchona as a system of classification of fevers or a means for diagnosis between malarial and non-malarial fevers. Its use in the effective treatment of malaria brought an end to treatment by
bloodletting and long-held ideas of
humorism from
Galen. Clements Markham was knighted for his role in establishing
Cinchona species in Indonesia. Hasskarl was knighted with the Dutch order of the Lion. == Impacts on Indigenous Communities in the Amazon ==