Sir Clements Markham, whose services in introducing cinchona culture into India and Ceylon are well known, has earnestly insisted on the adoption of the name chinchona instead of cinchona in justice to the lady after whom the generic title was chosen. In a Memoir of the Lady Ana de Osorio, Countess of Chinchon, Sir Clements Markham somewhat extravagantly exalts that “illustrious and beautiful lady,” whom he describes as “one of the most noble benefactors of the human race.” She may have been an excellent woman, but her advocate does not furnish sufficient evidence of her virtues to justify such lavish praise. The Countess was cured of a fever by the bark, and on her return to Spain she distributed the remedy to such of her vassals as needed it. Perhaps her physician, who brought a quantity of the bark home with him and sold it, did more to make it generally known than she did by her gifts.
Still there is no doubt that Linnæus intended by the name he gave to the genus to perpetuate her memory; and it is likewise true that her name was Chinchon and not Cinchon. The latter term, Sir Clements says, means a broad girdle or a policeman’s belt, and makes the intended honour ridiculous. His opinion was that Linnæus had erred in ignorance, having been misled by several French writers. Daniel Hanbury, however, who contested some of Markham’s assertions, gave good reasons for believing that Linnæus had adopted the term cinchona deliberately for the sake of euphony. Anyway he shows that Mutis, the disciple of Linnæus, who sent him the plant from which he wrote his description, while at first writing of chinchona soon followed the spelling of the master and continued to do so.
The name cinchona and derivatives from it are too well established to be dislodged now for a sentimental reason, even if it were not that the adopted name is undoubtedly easier to pronounce than the more strictly correct one would be.
Cultivation of Cinchona in the East.
Many botanists and travellers remarked upon the reckless manner in which the natives of Peru collected the bark. They felled the trees and stripped them of bark without planting new ones to take the place of those destroyed. Humboldt says that 25,000 trees were thus destroyed in a single year.
The first attempt to transport any plants to Europe was made by La Condamine in 1743. He had obtained some young plants and was conveying them down the Amazon River to Cayenne, intending to transport them to the Jardin des Plantes at Paris. At the mouth of the river a wave swept over his little vessel and washed away his whole collection. Joseph de Jussieu, who had accompanied La Condamine on his expedition, and remained in the country after him for fifteen years, was robbed of his collection at Buenos Ayres, and lost his reason as a consequence of his misfortune.
Royle in 1839 strongly advocated the introduction of cinchona into India, and suggested the Nilgiri Hills as a suitable position for the experiment. His suggestions were taken into consideration by the Government, but no immediate steps were taken. The Dutch Government first moved in the matter, sending a botanist named Hasskarl to South America in 1852. Their object was to establish cinchona gardens in Java. All through the fifties they were carrying on their experiments, but with very slow success. The English Government were meanwhile instructing their Consuls in South America to obtain seeds, but it was not until 1859 that the collection was seriously undertaken for India. In that year Mr. (now Sir) Clements Markham was commissioned to go to South America to collect seeds of the best species. Markham has told the full story of his mission in his work on “Peruvian Bark,” and has incidentally in that narrative exposed the parsimony of the authorities in their treatment of those associated in the important and profitable enterprise successfully carried through after some years of hard and often perilous labour. His principal coadjutor, Dr. Spruce, whose health was utterly ruined by his efforts, was paid a salary of £30 a month while the work lasted, and a special grant of £27 for an exhaustive report which he prepared. A pension of £50 a year was given him by the British Government for his botanical services, and after thirteen years of persistent importunity, the Indian Government granted him another £50 a year. Mr. Pritchett, who collected plants and seeds in the forests of Huanuco, was paid his salary and nothing more. To Mr. Cross, who assisted Dr. Spruce in the collection of the red bark, two grants of £300 each were made. Mr. Weir, “a most conscientious, active, and skilful worker, and, so far as his own labours were concerned, completely successful,” crippled and disabled for life, got nothing from the Government, though the Horticultural Society collected some funds which yielded £27 a year.
The monumental instance of official ingratitude was, however, manifested in the case of Charles Ledger, to whom, more than to any other man, the world is indebted for cheap quinine, and out of whose adventurous services the Dutch nation have made millions in their Java dependency. Between the years 1841 and 1858 Ledger was travelling in South America in the employment of the New South Wales Government buying alpacas. He had a faithful servant, Manuel Manami, who had often told him how jealously the natives, especially those of Bolivia, guarded the knowledge of their best seeds. Manami had himself been a cascarillero or bark cutter. On Ledger’s return to Australia in 1858 he found that Holland and England were eagerly seeking to plant cinchona in their Eastern possessions. The mission of Hasskarl had been practically a failure. He had not been able to enter Bolivia, and the species he brought to Java were comparatively valueless. Ledger was in South America when Markham went there on his official journey. He endeavoured to open communication with the British Government’s envoy but failed. He, however, pressed his faithful Manami to secure some of the precious “rojo” (Cinchona Calisaya, var. Ledgeriana) seeds from Bolivia. Manami fulfilled this service, somewhat reluctantly, sent the seeds to his master, but was himself thrown into prison, beaten, and died soon after in consequence of the cruel treatment he underwent.
Ledger sent the seeds to his brother in England authorising him to dispose of them as he best could. They were at first offered to the British Government, but as Markham was then in India superintending the planting of the seeds he had brought from Peru, the offer was not entertained. Half of them were sold to a Ceylon planter, and the rest were taken, after some discussion, by the Dutch Government for about £33, with a promise of a further payment if the plants flourished. A year later on a report that 20,000 plants had been raised from these seeds the Dutch Government paid Ledger a further £100 and got from him a letter expressing his satisfaction. That was in 1866.
For many years Ledger was lost sight of, and it was stated in several books that he was dead. In 1895, however, a letter from him was published in The Chemist and Druggist, of London, dated from Goulburne, N.S.W. He wrote simply in reference to a paper which had been printed in that journal referring to the admixture of some white flowers with coca as imported. The addition of the “inga flowers,” Mr. Ledger explained, was made by the natives in the belief that they kept the coca leaves fresh and green. Later it was found that Mr. Ledger was living in comparative poverty in consequence of the failure of Australian banks and the slump in land values. Efforts were made to induce the Dutch Government to make some compensation to the man who had done them such grand service, but at first a blank refusal was returned. In May, 1807, however, on his seventy-ninth birthday, Mr. Ledger received the announcement from Amsterdam that an annuity of £100 would be conferred upon him. He lived nine years after this.