Cinchona another fever remedy. The bark of cinchona can be harvested in a number of ways. One approach was to cut the tree but this and girdling are equally destructive and unsustainable so small strips were cut and various techniques such as "mossing", the application of moss to the cut areas, were used to allow the tree to heal. Other approaches involved coppicing and chopping of side branches which were then stripped of bark. The bark was dried into what were called quills and then powdered for medicinal uses. The bark contains alkaloids, including quinine and quinidine. Cinchona is the only
Hugh Algernon Weddell des environs de Paris (1845). In 1843, he was invited to join the expedition of François Louis de la Porte, comte de Castelnau to South America, and he explored and collected botanical specimens on that continent for five years. In May 1845, Weddell left the expedition which was then in Paraguay, and proceeded on a solitary journey which would take him into Peru and Bolivia. Before leaving Paris, he had been particularly instructed by the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle to undertake a thorough investigation of the "Cinchona" plant, or "fever bark" tree in its native habitat. "Cinchona", the source of