and soluble, and crystallizes in long silky needles. It is prepared by adding sulphuric acid to the sulphate.1 Chinchonine differs from quinine in being less soluble in water, and being altogether insoluble in ether. It has the property of right-handed rotatory polarization. Quinidine also has the property of right-handed rotatory polarization, and forms salts like those of quinine. It becomes green by successive additions of chlorine and ammonia. Chinchonidine has not the property of turning green, and forms a sulphate almost exactly like sulphate of quinine.2 The discovery of these alkaloids in the quinquina3 bark, by enabling chemists to extract the healing principle, has greatly increased the usefulness of the drug. In small doses they promote the appetite and assist digestion; and chinchonine is equal to quinine in mild cases of intermittent fever; but in severe cases the use of quinine is absolutely necessary. Thus these alkaloids not only possess tonic properties to which recourse may be had under a multitude of circumstances, but also have a febrifugal virtue which is unequalled, and which has rendered them almost a necessary of life in tropical countries, and in low marshy situations where agues prevail. Many a poor fellow's life was saved in the Walcheren expedition by the timely arrival of a Yankee trader with some chests of bark, after the supply had entirely failed in the camp. Dr. which are taken from Peruvian bark. Baikie, in his voyage up the Niger, attributed the return of his men alive to the habitual use of quinine; and the number of men whose lives it has saved in our naval service and in India will give a notion of the vast importance of a sufficient and cheap supply of the precious bark which yields it. India and other countries have been vainly searched for a substitute for quinine, and we may say with as much truth now as Laubert did in 1820-"This medicine, the most precious of all those known in the art of healing, is one of the greatest conquests made by man over the vegetable kingdom. The treasures which Peru yields, and which the Spaniards sought and dug out of the bowels of the earth, are not to be compared for utility with the bark of the quinquina-tree, which they for a long time ignored." 5 Dictionnaire des Sciences Médicales, quoted by Delondre, p. 7. CHAPTER II. The valuable species of Chinchona-trees-their history, their discoverers, and their forests. I-THE LOXA REGION, AND ITS CROWN BARKS. THE region around Loxa, on the southern frontier of the modern republic of Ecuador, is the original home of the Chinchona, and nearly in the centre of its latitudinal range of growth. On the lofty grass-covered slopes of the Andes, around the little town of Loxa, and in the sheltered ravines and dense forests, those precious trees were found which first made known to the world the healing virtues of Peruvian bark. They were most plentifully met with in the forests of Uritusinga, Rumisitana, Cajanuma, Boqueron, Villonaco, and Monje, all within short distances of Loxa. Linnæus had named these trees Chinchona officinalis; but when Humboldt and Bonpland examined them, the discovery of other species yielding medicinal bark had rendered the name inappropriate, and they very properly re-christened them, after the distinguished Frenchman who had originally described them, Chinchona Condaminea. Humboldt says that they grow on mica slate and gneiss, from 6000 to 8000 feet above the sea, with a mean temperature between 60° and 65° Fahr. In his time the tree was cut down in its first flowering season, or in the fourth or seventh of its age, according as it had sprung from a vigorous root-shoot, or from a seed. He describes the luxuriance of the vegetation to be such that the younger trees, only six inches in diameter, often attain from fifty-three to sixty-four English feet in height. "This beautiful tree," he continues, "which is adorned with leaves above five inches long and two broad, growing in dense forests, seems always to aspire to rise above its neighbours. As its upper branches wave to and fro in the wind, their red and shining foliage produces a strange and peculiar effect, recognisable from a great distance." It varies much in the shape of the leaves, according to the altitude at which it grows, and bark-collectors themselves would be deceived if they did not know the tree by the glands, so long unobserved by botanists. The C. Condaminea described by Humboldt is the same as the C. Uritusinga of Pavon. It once yielded great quantities of thick trunk bark, but, owing to reckless felling through a course of years, it is now almost exterminated, and its bark is rarely met with in commerce. The distinguished botanist Don Francisco Caldas examined the chinchona forests of Loxa after Humboldt, between 1803 and 1809. He says that the famous quina-tree of Loxa grows in the forests of Uritusinga and Cajanuma, at a height of from 6200 to 8200 feet above the sea, in a temperature of 41° to 72° Fahr.; but that it is only found between the rivers Zamora and Cachiyacu. He describes the tree as from thirty to forty-eight feet high, with three or more stems growing from the same root; the leaves as lanceolate, shining on both sides, with veins a rosy colour, a short and tender pubescence on the under side when young, and when past maturity a bright scarlet colour; the bark black when exposed to the sun and wind, a brownish colour when closed in by other trees, and always covered with lichens ;3 and the rock on which the trees grow, a micaceous schist. Don Francisco José de Caldas, a native of New Granada, was one of the most eminent scientific men that South America has yet produced. He was associated with Mutis in Aspects, ii. p. 267. 2 Semanario de la Nueva Granada. 3 From Martius: a note in No. 1 of Howard's Nueva Quinologia de Pavon. the botanical expedition of New Granada; he explored the chinchona region as far as Loxa; and thus takes his place as one of those to whom we are indebted for throwing light on the nature of the trees yielding Peruvian bark. Caldas was born at Popayan in the year 1770; and, from early youth, devoted himself to the pursuits of science with untiring energy, especially studying botany, mathematics, meteorology, and physical geography. He constructed his own barometer and sextant, and, ignorant of the methods adopted in Europe, he discovered the way of ascertaining altitudes by a boiling-point thermometer. He has left many memoirs on botanical and other subjects behind him, and his style is always animated, clear, and interesting; but many of the productions of this remarkable man are still in manuscript, and others are lost to us for ever. Above all, it is to be regretted that his botanical chart of the chinchona genus, which he promised in one of his memoirs, has never seen the light. After the declaration of independence Caldas was nominated by the Congress at Bogota to publish the works of his friend the botanist Mutis. When the brutal Spanish General Morillo entered Bogota in June 1816, he perpetrated a series of savage massacres, in which more than 600 of the most distinguished men in the country fell victims. Among them was Caldas, who was shot through the back on the 30th of October 1816.5 The Spanish botanists Ruiz and Pavon also examined the chinchona-trees of Loxa; and the latter described two species, C. Uritusinga, named from the mountain on which it was once most abundant, and C. Chahuarguera, so called from a fancied resemblance of the bark to a pair of breeches (huara in Quichua) made from the fibre of the American aloe • Some of these MSS. are, I believe, in possession of Don Pedro Carbo, of Guayaquil. " Spanish edition of General Miller's Memoirs, i. p. 42. |