Note 209 — Chapter VIII

It may be remarked that it was a woman, Lady Mary Montagu, who introduced inoculation with small-pox virus into Western Europe, and that it was also a woman—a simple English milkmaid—who communicated to Jenner the information which led to his discovery of a prophylactic against small-pox. But of far greater importance was the introduction into Europe of that priceless febrifuge and antiperiodic—chinchona bark. This was due to the Countess of Chinchon, vicereine of Peru. Having been cured by its virtues of an aggravated case of tertian fever in 1638, while living in Lima, she lost no time, on her return to Spain, in making known to the world the marvelous curative properties of the precious quinine-producing bark. The powder made from the bark was most appropriately called Pulvis Comitessæ—the countess's powder—and by this name it was long known to druggists and in commerce. Thanks to Linnæus, the memory of the gracious lady will always be kept green, because her name is now borne by nearly eight score species of the beautiful trees which constitute the great and incomparable genus Chinchona. See A Memoir of the Lady Ana de Osorio, Countess of Chinchon, and Vice-Queen of Peru, by Clements R. Markham, London, 1874.