Cinchona ledgeriana" had a yield of 8 to 13 percent quinine in bark grown in Dutch Indonesia which effectively out-competed the British Indian production. It was only later that the English saw the value and sought to obtain the seeds of "C. ledgeriana" from the Dutch. During World War II, the Japanese conquered Java and the United States lost access to the cinchona plantations that supplied war-critical quinine medication. Botanical expeditions – called Cinchona Missions – were launched in 1942-1944 to explore promising areas of South America in an effort to locate cinchona species that contained quinine and could be harvested
Schedula Romana treatment for malaria was found in the forests of the Andes in Peru. A such called fever tree, whose bark, made into powder and given as a beverage, cured the fevers and was known to have produced miraculous results in the local population. The bark was obtained from several species of the genus "Cinchona", of the Rubiaceae family. Popularized in Europe through the work of jesuits in America, the cinchona tree bark came to be known as Jesuit's bark. Perhaps the most prominent popularizer of the Jesuit's bark was a Spanish Jesuit Cardinal, Juan de Lugo. In 1643, Cardinal Lugo