Jesuits' powder

摘要

FATHER ANTONIO DE LA Calancha, a Jesuit priest living in 17thcentury South America wrote in theChronicle of St Augustine in 1633 of a'tree which they call "the fever tree"whose bark made into a powderamounting to the weight of two smallsilver coins and given as a beverage,cures the fevers and the tertians:(Tertians was the name for the three-day cycle of one form of malarialfever.) The Inca name for this treewas quina but there is no evidencethat they recognised its value for thetreatment of malaria, but simply forits ability to prevent cold-inducedshivering. It was the Jesuitmissionaries who first used thepowdered tree bark for treatingmalaria and so it became known asJesuits' powder. Cardinal Juan de Lugo pioneered its use in the middle of the 17th century in Rome at a timewhen Rome was surrounded by marshland where malaria was endemic.