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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. KNOWLEDGE OF FEBRIFUGE BARK AMONG THE INDIANS. The aborigines of South America appear, except perhaps in one locality, to have been ignorant of the virtues of Peruvian bark. This sovereign remedy is absent in the wallets of itinerant doctors, whose materia medica has been handed down from father to son, since the days of the Yncas. It is mentioned neither by the Ynca Garcilasso de la Vega, nor by Acosta, in their lists of Indian medicines. It seems probable, nevertheless, that the Indians were aware of the virtues of Peruvian bark in the neighbourhood of Loxa, 230 miles south of Quito, where its use was first made known to Europeans; and the local name for the tree quina- quina, bark of bark, indicates that it was believed to possess some special medicinal properties. The Indians looked upon their conquerors with dislike and suspicion; it is improbable that they would be inclined to impart knowledge of this nature to them; and the interval which elapsed between the discovery and6 Discovery of the Virtues of Bark. Ch. n. In Qnichna, when the name of a plant is reduplicated, it almost invariably implies that it possesses some medicinal qualities. In some parts of Peru the Indians use the word quina-quina for the balsam-tree settlement of the country and the first use of Peruvian bark by Europeans is thus easily accounted for. The conquest and subsequent civil wars in Peru cannot be said to have been finally concluded until the time of the Marquis of Canete in 1560; and Jussieu reports that a Jesuit, who had a fever at Malacotas, was cured by Peruvian bark in IGOO.f M. de la Condamine also found a manuscript in a library of a convent at Loxa, in which it was stated that the Europeans of the province used the bark at about the same time. Thus an interval of ...
| ISBN-13 | 9780217974349 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10 | 0217974341 |
| Weight | 1.56 Pounds |
| Dimensions | 9.00 x 6.00 x 1.08 In |
| List Price | $23.37 |
| Format | Paperback |
|---|---|
| Pages | 486 pages |
| Publisher | |
| Published On | 2009-08-01 |
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