ABSTRACT
In the sixteenth century, a serendipitous discovery led to a treatment for the ague . In the Viceroy’s Palace in Lima, Peru, the beautiful Countess of Chinchon lay gravely ill with the ague . Her husband, the Count, fearful she would die, called the court physician to provide a remedy, but none was at hand . In desperation, the physician obtained a native Indian prescription: an extract from the bark of a tree growing in the Andes Mountains . The concoction was given to the Countess in a glass of wine, and the symptoms abated . The physician was rewarded, the Count relieved, and the Countess returned to Spain where she lived happily thereafter . The remedy that had been provided, and called by the Indians of Peru “quina-quina,” literally “bark of barks,” came to be known in Europe as the Countess’ powder or the Countess’ bark . This story of the Countess’ recovery from her affliction-surely it must have been malaria that she had-circulated for 300 years in Europe; regrettably the story appears to be a fable . Who then first introduced fever bark into Europe? The most plausible explanation (and this is only a guess) is that the medicinal effect of the bark was discovered by the Spanish missionaries who came to Peru four decades after Pizarro’s conquest of the Incas, and either by following the practices of local Indian herbalists or by trial and error its fever-curing properties were found .
