Cinchona officinalis many-flowered; hypanthium with short coarse hairs; reddish calyx, glabrous or nearly so, with triangular lobes; pink or red corolla, sericeous, the lobes ovate, acute, the corolla tube being about 1 cm. long. Fruit and oblong capsule, 1.5–2 cm. long, almost glabrous. English: quinine, red cinchona, cinchona bark, Jesuit’s bark, loxa bark, Jesuit’s powder, countess powder, Peruvian bark. Spanish: quina, cascarilla, cargua cargua, corteza coja. French: quinquina, écorce du Pérou. "Cinchona officinalis" is a medicinal plant, one of several "Cinchona" species used for the production of quinine, which is an anti-fever agent. It is especially useful in the prevention and treatment
Cinchona and Louis Bouger that was sent to Ecuador to determine the length of a degree of the 1/4 of meridian arc in the neighbourhood of the equator, was published by the French Academy of Sciences. In it he identified three separate species. The birth of homeopathy was based on cinchona bark testing. The founder of homeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann, when translating William Cullen's "Materia medica", noticed Cullen had written that Peruvian bark was known to cure intermittent fevers. Hahnemann took daily a large, rather than homeopathic, dose of Peruvian bark. After two weeks, he said he felt malaria-like symptoms. This idea