Cinchona Cinchona Cinchona is a genus of flowering plants in the family Rubiaceae containing at least 23 species of trees and shrubs. They are native to the tropical Andean forests of western South America. A few species are reportedly naturalized in Central America, Jamaica, French Polynesia, Sulawesi, Saint Helena in the South Atlantic, and São Tomé and Príncipe off the coast of tropical Africa. Several species were sought after for their medicinal value and cultivated in India and Java where they also formed hybrids. The barks of several species yield quinine and other alkaloids that were the only effective treatments against
Jesuit's bark in the Jesuit College at Rome, who undoubtedly deserves the greatest credit after de Lugo for distributing the genuine unadulterated article, and to whom are attributed the Roman directions for its use "Schedula Romana", the earliest dating at least from 1651. In his friend Honoré Fabri, a French Jesuit, who stayed for a time in Rome, de Lugo won a determined defender of the bark against the first anticinchona pamphlet written by the Brussels doctor Jean-Jacques Chifflet. Under the pseudonym of Antimus Conygius, Fabri wrote in 1655 the first paper on cinchona published in Italy, as well as the first