In 1638, the beautiful Lady Ana de Osorio, Countess of Chinchon, had held court in her husband鈥檚 palace in Lima for nine years. As wife of the Viceroy of Peru, her life had been one long whirl of balls, banquets and fiestas. But now she lay on her sweat-soaked bed stricken with malaria.
The Count watched helplessly as the fever tightened its grip. Things looked bad. But then a note arrived. It was from the governor of Loxa, a town in the Andes far to the north. He knew of a treatment that would cure the Countess. Would she try it? The note was followed by the governor himself, bearing a package containing the powdered bark of a tree that grew around Loxa.
The Countess swallowed the bitter potion-and was back on her feet in no time. Grateful for so miraculous a recovery, Lady Ana ordered large quantities of the bark to dispense to the feverish citizens of Lima. And when the Count and Countess of Chinchon returned to their castle and lands in Spain, where malaria was rife, the Countess took her miracle powder with her. It鈥檚 a romantic story. It first appeared in the 1660s and was never doubted. In 1874 Clements Markham, who became the president of the Royal Society popularised the Countess in his book. But is the story true?
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QUININE is one of the most important substances ever extracted from a plant. The bitter alkaloid comes from the bark of Cinchona trees which grow in the moist forests of the Andes. Since the mid-1600s, physicians and apothecaries across Europe had been doing a roaring trade in the powdered bark. Victims of intermittent fever, or tertian fever, as malaria was known, had good reason to be grateful to the woman who brought the secret of quinine to Europe.
As the curative powers of the bitter-tasting bark grew famous, scientists pondered the identity of the tree it came from. In 1735, French naturalist Charles Marie de la Condamine finally collected a few samples and sent them to the great Swedish botanist Linnaeus-along with the story of the Countess. Linnaeus was quite taken with the tale and decided to name the tree Cinchona, forever linking the Countess and the cure. (Somehow he mislaid an 鈥渉鈥�, but his intentions were good.)
The story told to Linnaeus first appeared in a book written in 1663 by Sebastianus Bado-a physician who ran a large hospital in Genoa. 鈥淚n the city of Lima, which is the capital of Peru, the wife of the Viceroy, at that time the Count of Chinchon, fell sick,鈥� wrote Bado. 鈥淗er illness was the tertian fever, which in that part is by no means mild but severe and dangerous.鈥�
He told how the news of the lady鈥檚 sickness reached the ears of the Corregidor of Loxa-a Spanish official who had been cured of the same sickness a few years before. The Corregidor wrote immediately to the Viceroy, saying 鈥渢hat he possessed a certain remedy which he unreservedly recommended鈥�. The Viceroy summoned the man with his medicine. His wife 鈥渄ecided to take the remedy, and after taking it, to the amazement of all, she recovered sooner than you can say it鈥�.
Once cured, the Countess began to dispense the bark to the sick and needy of Lima. 鈥淎nd this bark was afterwards called Countess鈥檚 powder.鈥� All this, said Bado, had happened around 30 or 40 years earlier-but he had it on good authority from a merchant who had spent many years in Peru.
The story had been retold so many times over the centuries few doubted it. And in 1874, Clements Markham, an expert on Cinchona, transformed the Countess from obscure historical figure to popular heroine.
In his youth Markham had spent much time in Peru, and as a clerk in the British government鈥檚 India Office he was sent back to his old haunts to collect Cinchona seeds and spirit them out of the country. The government wanted to establish plantations in India to provide cheap supplies of quinine.
Markham later became famous as President of the Royal Geographical Society-and as the man behind Scott鈥檚 expedition to Antarctica. He was also a prolific writer and eminently qualified to tell the story of Cinchona. On a visit to Spain, he decided to track down more of his heroine鈥檚 story. In his Memoir, Markham gives his countess a name, the Lady Ana de Osorio, a detail Bado failed to mention. He also fixes the date of her cure as 1638, something Bado had been vague about.
Markham delved deep into the family histories of both Count and Countess before recounting how Cinchona had saved the Lady Ana. And after her cure, he writes: 鈥淭he Countess of Chinchon returned to Spain in the spring of 1640, bringing with her a supply of that precious quina bark which had worked so wonderful a cure upon herself; and the healing virtues of which she intended to distribute amongst the sick of her husband鈥檚 estates.鈥� As a final touch, he points out that 鈥渉er good deeds are even now remembered by the people of Chinchon鈥�.
Which is odd. Because if Markham had spent less time tracing the family histories of his count and countess and more time checking out the couple themselves, he might have discovered that the Lady Ana died in 1625-three years before the Count of Chinchon was appointed Viceroy of Peru. She never went to South America.
The Count did take a Vicereine to Peru, but she was his second wife, Francisca Henriquez de Ribera. Maybe Markham had simply got his wives mixed up? Apparently not.
For almost the whole of the Viceroy鈥檚 reign in Peru, his secretary Don Antonio Suardo kept a meticulous diary of the daily goings on at court. Along with his descriptions of f锚tes and fiestas, bullfights and balls, Suardo gives chapter and verse on the family鈥檚 every cough, sniffle and stomach upset.
Apart from a sore throat in 1630 and a touch of diarrhoea in 1636, the Countess was out and about on an endless round of official duties. The second Countess of Chinchon was clearly a remarkably fit and healthy woman.
The Count, though, was hardly ever well. Suardo leaves no doubt that the Viceroy suffered frequent episodes of malaria. Perhaps quinine had cured the Count of Chinchon and not his wife? But no-there鈥檚 not even a hint of it in Suardo鈥檚 diary. He mentions no unusual treatment, no pulverised bark. When the Count was feverish, his doctors bled him.
As for the notion that the Countess brought the drug to Europe, that too is a myth. The Countess never made it home to Spain. She died aboard ship and was buried in Colombia.
It鈥檚 been 60 years since medical historian Alec Haggis exposed the fatal flaws in the story-yet it still refuses to go away. Quinine was almost certainly discovered and brought to Europe by Jesuit missionaries, who learned of its powers from Peruvian Indians. But fairytales have a powerful grip on the imagination-and Jesuit priests can鈥檛 compete with a Countess.