Quinine’s Royal Roots: How a Spanish Countess Changed Medicine Forever
This botanical history post was featured on The Daily Gardener podcast:
May 16, 1735
On this day, dear readers, we find ourselves aboard a French ship, witnessing a moment that would change the course of medical history.
Picture, if you will, a group of intrepid scientists and botanists, their eyes gleaming with excitement as they carefully tend to their precious cargo - the first cinchona trees bound for European soil.
At the helm of this groundbreaking expedition were two remarkable men: the scientist Charles Marie de La Condamine, the first to describe the Cinchona tree, and the botanist Joseph de Jussieu.
Their mission?
To transport these miraculous trees to Paris, where they would undoubtedly be the crown jewel of the city's botanical collection.
Alas! Nature had other plans.
Can you imagine the dismay as the trees, so carefully nurtured, were washed overboard?
The loss must have been heartbreaking, yet it speaks to the immense value placed on these trees. For you see, dear gardeners, Europe had caught wind of the cinchona's power, and the race was on to harness its bark.
But let us rewind the clock a century, to uncover the origins of this tree's illustrious name. Picture a Spanish Countess named Ana, newly wed to the Count of Chinchon.
In 1629, they set sail for Lima, Peru, where the Count was to serve as viceroy, overseeing nearly all of South America save for Brazil.
Can you imagine the excitement of such a journey?
The trepidation?
Little did the Countess know that her name would soon be forever linked to a medical revolution.
The following year, tragedy struck. The Countess fell gravely ill with tertian ague, a fever that struck every other day with clockwork precision.
Enter our hero: Don Francisco Lopez de Canizares, the Governor of Loxa.
With haste, he dispatched a parcel of cinchona bark to the ailing Countess.
Can you picture the scene?
The worried Count, the feverish Countess, and this mysterious bark that promised salvation?
Lo and behold, the Countess made a rapid recovery!
So impressed were they by this miracle cure that when they began their return journey to Spain eleven years later, they brought along a supply of the precious Quina bark, hoping to introduce this wonder to the rest of Europe.
Tragically, fate had one more twist in store.
The Countess Ana, who had survived the deadly fever, succumbed to the perils of the long voyage home, breathing her last in Cartagena in December 1639.
Yet, Ana's legacy lived on.
The Count, upon his return to Spain, spread word of the miraculous bark. Soon, it became known as Pulvis Comitissa - the Countess's Powder.
And over a century later, in 1742, the great Linnaeus himself named the genus Cinchona in honor of the Countess of Chinchon. (Though, in a delightful twist of botanical nomenclature, he forgot the 'h' - it should have been Chinchona!)
Today, as we sip our gin and tonics, let us raise a glass to Countess Ana, to the intrepid French expedition, and to the humble cinchona tree. For in its bark lies quinine, a medicine that has saved countless lives from the ravages of malaria.
And perhaps, as we tend to our own gardens, we might pause to wonder: what miracles might be hiding in the plants around us?
What discoveries await the keen eye and the curious mind?
For in every leaf, every flower, every bit of bark, there may lie a story as remarkable as that of the cinchona tree - a tale of discovery, of nobility, and of nature's endless capacity to surprise and heal us.