Note 4 — Chapter I
Reading edition
La Condamine, Jussieu, and Ruiz all believed that the Indians were aware of the medicinal qualities of Peruvian bark, and that they imparted their knowledge to the Spaniards. Humboldt and Ulloa were of an opposite opinion. The stories of its virtues having been discovered by watching the pumas or South-American lions chewing the bark to cure their fevers, mentioned by Condamine; and of an Indian having found it out by drinking of the waters of a lake into which a chinchona-tree had fallen—told by Geoffroy—are of modern and European origin.