Condamine, and others who acquired their knowledge on the spot, that the Indians had long used the bark as a dye. The Countess Ana of Chinchon, wife of the Spanish Viceroy of Peru, was cured of a fever by the bark in 1638, but there is evidence that its medicinal value had been experienced by some of the conquering race before that date. One story is that when the Countess was ill and all the usual remedies had been found ineffective, the Corregidor of Loxa, Don Juan Lopez Canizares, who had himself been cured by the bark of a similar illness, brought some of the remedy from Loxa to Lima and staked his reputation on its infallibility. After her cure the Countess became an enthusiastic advocate of the medicine, administering it with uniform success to her dependents and others in Lima, and on her return to Spain in 1640, exerting herself to make it known there.
Another story is to the effect that a native maid in the employment of the Countess had made known the virtues of the bark to the Viceroy out of affection for her mistress, though until then the Indians had concealed the secret from their cruel rulers. The most likely account is that the bark had become known as a valuable medicine to the Jesuit missionaries who had been in the country for fully fifty years when the Countess of Chinchon was cured.
Le Condamine stated, in 1738, that the Indians had a legend that they had become acquainted with the properties of the bark in consequence of an earthquake in the neighbourhood of Loxa which had caused a number of the trees surrounding a lake near the city to be thrown into the water. An Indian violently ill with a fever and consumed with thirst had drunk water from this lake and had been rapidly cured. Another tradition
