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But Michael Scott's noisy amorous novel of adventure was an extraordinary book to put in the hands of a child who had never been allowed to glance at the mildest and most febrifugal story-book. It was like giving a glass of brandy neat to someone who had never been weaned from a milk diet.
The union of Venezuela and New Grenada has also placed in the hands of one people the greater part of the quinquina exported from the New Continent. The temperate mountains of Merida, Santa Fe, Popayan, Quito and Loxa produce the finest qualities of this febrifugal bark hitherto known.
The Quichua name for the tree, quina-quina "bark of barks" shows that they believed it to possess medicinal properties; indeed, there is little doubt that they were aware of its febrifugal qualities, though they might not have attached much importance to them. Through them, probably, the Spanish colonists in the neighbourhood of Loxa first discovered its virtues.
This, however, is unfounded; since it is precisely by the disposition of the leaves, and the absence of stipules, that the cuspa differs totally from the trees of the rubiaceous family. Walker on the Virtues of the Cornus and the Cinchona compared. The taste, at once bitter and astringent, and the yellow colour of the bark led to the discovery of the febrifugal virtue of the cuspa.
Although the bark was used for many years, it was not till Dr Gomez, a surgeon in the Portuguese navy, in 1816 isolated the febrifugal principle, and called it chinchonine, that its true value became known. But the final discovery of quinine, as it is now used, is due to the French chemists Pelletier and Caventon, in 1820. It is a white substance, without smell, bitter, fusible, and crystallised.
He flung a battalion of bottles out of window, and left it open; beat up yolks of eggs in neat Schiedam, and administered it in small doses; followed this up by meat stewed in red wine and water, shredding into both mild febrifugal herbs, that did no harm.
The country- people in that part of France, as in the Aveyron, use this little plant largely as a febrifugal infusion; they also drink it as tea. My landlady showed me great bundles of it that she had dried for household use. The thought struck me, as I surveyed the mother superior's herbarium here is an excellent hint for the projectors of home colonies.
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