A Spanish governor advised a traditional remedy, which resulted in a miraculous and rapid cure. It tells of the wife of Luis Jerónimo de Cabrera, 4th Count of Chinchón and Viceroy of Peru, who fell ill in Lima with a tertian fever. The traditional story connecting cinchona with malaria treatment was first recorded by the Italian physician Sebastiano Bado in 1663. Jesuits played a key role in the transfer of remedies from the New World. The origins and claims to the use of febrifugal barks and powders in Europe, especially those used against malaria, were disputed even in the 17th century. The febrifugal properties of bark from trees now known to be in the genus Cinchona were used by many South American cultures prior to European contact, but malaria is an Old World disease that was introduced into the Americas by Europeans only after 1492. Nearly 300 species were later described and named in the genus, but a revision of the genus in 1998 identified only 23 distinct species. Ĭarl Linnaeus described the genus based on the species Cinchona officinalis, which is found only in a small region of Ecuador and is of little medicinal significance. During the 19th century, the introduction of several species into cultivation in the same areas of India and Java, by the English and Dutch East India Company, respectively, led to the formation of hybrids. In South America, natural populations of Cinchona species have geographically distinct distributions. The tribe Cinchoneae includes the genera Cinchonopsis, Jossia, Ladenbergia, Remijia, Stilpnophyllum, and Ciliosemina. A key character of the genus is that the flowers have marginally hairy corolla lobes. The fruit is a small capsule containing numerous seeds. The flowers are white, pink, or red, and produced in terminal panicles. The leaves are opposite, rounded to lanceolate, and 10–40 cm long. Description Ĭinchona plants belong to the family Rubiaceae and are large shrubs or small trees with evergreen foliage, growing 5 to 15 m (16 to 49 ft) in height. Traditional medicine uses from South America known as Jesuit's bark and Jesuit's powder have been traced to Cinchona. Linnaeus used the Italian spelling Cinchona, but the name Chinchón (pronounced in Spanish) led to Clements Markham and others proposing a correction of the spelling to Chinchona, and some prefer the pronunciation / tʃ ɪ n ˈ tʃ oʊ n ə/ for the common name of the plant. Ĭarl Linnaeus named the genus in 1742, based on a claim that the plant had cured the wife of the Count of Chinchón, a Spanish viceroy in Lima, in the 1630s, though the veracity of this story has been disputed. Cinchona plants continue to be revered for their historical legacy the national tree of Peru is in the genus Cinchona. Cinchona alkaloids show promise in treating falciparum malaria, which has evolved resistance to synthetic drugs. The artificial synthesis of quinine in 1944, an increase in resistant forms of malaria, and the emergence of alternate therapies eventually ended large-scale economic interest in cinchona cultivation. Trees in the genus are also known as fever trees because of their anti-malarial properties. These were the only effective treatments against malaria during the height of European colonialism, which made them of great economic and political importance.
A few species are reportedly naturalized in Central America, Jamaica, French Polynesia, Sulawesi, Saint Helena in the South Atlantic, and São Tomé and Príncipe off the coast of tropical Africa, and others have been cultivated in India and Java, where they have formed hybrids.Ĭinchona has been historically sought after for its medicinal value, as the bark of several species yields quinine and other alkaloids. All are native to the tropical Andean forests of western South America. Cinchona (pronounced / s ɪ ŋ ˈ k oʊ n ə/ or / tʃ ɪ n ˈ tʃ oʊ n ə/ ) is a genus of flowering plants in the family Rubiaceae containing at least 23 species of trees and shrubs.
0 kommentar(er)
