History of pharmacy in the United States of its discoverer, which became the first effective treatment for malaria. The active ingredient of this cinchona bark, quinine, was the primary treatment for malaria well into the 1940s. "About 170 drugs used by the Indians of British North America, and perhaps 50 used by the indigenous people of the Caribbean, Mexico, Central and South America" became important enough in the U.S. (as the practitioners of chemistry and pharmacy eventually catalogued, analyzed and understood them) to merit listing in the United States Pharmacopoeia (est. 1820) or the National Formulary. In the early 1700s, James Oglethorpe, founder of the Georgia colony,
Cinchona mention of the Countess suffering from fever although the Count himself had many malarial attacks. On account of numerous other discrepancies this is best treated as a legend. Quina bark was mentioned by Fray Antonio de La Calancha in 1638 as coming from a tree in Loja (Loxa). He noted that bark powder weighing about two coins was cast into water and drunk to cure fevers and "tertians". Jesuit Father Bernabé Cobo (1582–1657) also wrote on the "fever tree" in 1653. The legend was popularized in English literature by Markham in his writings and in 1874 he also published a