Fundamental errors in the early history of cinchona / by A.W. Haggis.

  • Haggis, A. W. (Alec William James), 1889-1946.
Date:
[1941]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Fundamental errors in the early history of cinchona / by A.W. Haggis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    12/72 page 426
    I\ui/. says in one of his pamphlets:— I lie natives ol the country call the tree hy the name of Quinquino, and its hark and trmt b\ that of Quinquina; others call the tree Quinquina, hut it is nioi e commonly called hy the name of Quinquino. 1 his Quinquina of Ruiz has heett definitely identified hy Lamhert as Myroxylon pcruifcruui, Lin. fil.-8 It seen is theietore, in view of the fact that orthographical variation was in common practice in the seventeenth century, that the term Qiiiuita-Oiiiiiua meaning as it does a certain leguminous plant, thus called may very probably have been the original Ouiclutan name foi the I eruvian balsam tree (Mvroxylon pcruifcniui, Lin. fil.) which attei wards became known to Europeans as Oiiiiiu-Quiiui. Certainly it is a more logical deduction than that offered hy La C ondamine. I hat the name Quina-Quina did in the first place pro¬ perly belong to the Peruvian balsam tree, and not to Cinchona will he shown in the section which follows. CONCLUSIONS 1. 1 hat La Condamine’s contention that the name Qiiiiia-Quina was derived from the Ouichuan term Ouina ai is proved wrong hy the authority he himself quotes. 2. That the Ouichuan term Quinua-Quinua, which unquestion¬ ably meant “ a leguminous tree ” possessing medicinal virtues, is the closest approximation in the earliest Quichua-Spanish vocabularies to the term Quiiia-Quina. 3. That the only Peruvian medicinal tree possessing a name similar to Quinua-Quinua, definitely leguminous and known to the Spaniards at the time of the Ouichua-Spanish vocabularies ( 1604) was that which yielded Peruvian balsam, and therefore was no doubt the species known as Myroxylon pcntifcruni, Lin. fil. 4. That the term Quina-Quina is synonymous with Quinua- Quinua and is derived from it. -s Lambert, A. R., Illustration of the Genus Cinchona, 1821.
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