In an earlier post I wrote about significant trees and said I’d tell a couple of healing tree stories. Here’s one of them.
The Cinchona Tree is famous in the history of medicine. It’s a member of the Rubiaceae family (the same family of plants which coffee comes from). Actually there are 25 different species of Cinchona trees, and the one in question is “Cinchona officinalis“, which is native to Peru. Here’s the story –
The wife of the Viceroy of Peru, the Countess of Chinchon, fell sick with a high fever shortly after arriving from Europe in 1630. The local Spanish Jesuit priests had been taught to treat fevers by the indigenous Peruvian people. They used a preparation of the bark of the Cinchona tree. So, they treated the Countess with this and saved her life. It’s most likely that the fever she suffered was malaria, and we now know that the Peruvian tree bark contained a lot of “quinine”, which is still a staple treatment for malaria. Whether or not, the Countess of Chinchon ever really did get sick and was successfully treated with the bark of this tree will never be known but most historians think it is a myth.
Whatever the truth of the matter, the key players in the discovery of this tree’s power to cure malaria and the spread of that knowledge is down to the Jesuits. It was a Jesuit apothecary in Peru who heard about the local use of this bark to stop “shivers” in fevers and knowing the severity of the “shivers” in malaria he decided to try it out on sufferers with spectacular results. The Jesuits brought the bark back to Spain and Italy, where it became known as the “Jesuits’ powder“. It’s interesting that aligning the medicine so definitely with the Jesuits led to it being a highly controversial and contested form of medicine for decades. The Protestants were none too keen to accept a Catholic medicine! However, it was successful in case after case of fever, and it was produced, cultivated and distributed worldwide by the Jesuits.
The story of the discovery of quinine is beautifully told in “The Miraculous Fever-Tree” by Fiammetta Rocco (ISBN 0-00-257202-8). It’s a great read and brilliantly researched. In her book she gives many examples of the enormous impact of malaria on events in world history showing how both the disease itself, then, later, the successful treatment of the disease with this drug, probably determined the course of history on a number of occasions.
This “fever tree” is also a key part of the origin of a whole therapeutic practice. Dr Samuel Hahnemann, 1755 – 1843, a German doctor, was translating Cullen’s Materia Medica (the guide to medicines prescribed by doctors at that time) and he read of Peruvian Tree Bark (Jesuit’s powder) as a treatment for “Swamp fever” (malaria). Cullen said it worked by being an astringent (it dried the body up) and Hahnemann wondered if that was true, so he prepared some and took it himself to study its effects. Much to his surprise he developed all the symptoms of a patient with Swamp Fever. This was his discovery of the principle of “like cures like” which led to the creation of a therapy known as homeopathy.
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