Malaria saved the lives of thousands of workers and helped develop the methods used in future public-health campaigns against the disease. The first effective treatment for malaria came from the bark of cinchona tree, which contains quinine. This tree grows on the slopes of the Andes, mainly in Peru. The indigenous peoples of Peru made a tincture of cinchona to control fever. Its effectiveness against malaria was found and the Jesuits introduced the treatment to Europe around 1640; by 1677, it was included in the London Pharmacopoeia as an antimalarial treatment. It was not until 1820 that the active ingredient, quinine,
Cinchona was finally described carefully by the astronomer Charles Marie de la Condamine who visited Quito in 1735 on a quest to measure an arc of the meridian. The species he described, "Cinchona officinalis," was however found to be of little therapeutic value. The first living plants seen in Europe were "C. calisaya" plants grown at the "Jardin des Plantes" from seeds collected by Hugh Algernon Weddell from Bolivia in 1846. José Celestino Mutis, physician to the Viceroy of Nueva Granada, Pedro Messia de la Cerda gathered information on cinchona in Colombia from 1760 and wrote a manuscript "El Arcano de