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
Cinchona people. Italian sources spelt Quina as Cina which was a source of confusion with "Smilax" from China. Haggis argued that Qina and Jesuit's bark actually referred to "Myroxylon peruiferum" or Peruvian balsam and that this was an item of importance in Spanish trade in the 1500s. Over time, the bark of the "Myroxylon" was adulterated with the similar looking bark of what we now know as "Cinchona". Gradually the adulterant became the main product that was the key therapeutic ingredient used in malarial therapy. The bark was included as "Cortex Peruanus" in the London Pharmacopoeia in 1677. The "fever tree"