cinchona

Etymology

From New Latin cinchona, from Spanish Chinchón. Named by Carl Linnaeus after Ana de Osorio, 4th Countess of Chinchón (1599–1625), the wife of the Spanish Viceroy of Peru, who was allegedly cured of a fever by the bark.

noun

1. A tree or shrub of the genus Cinchona, native to the Andes in South America but since widely cultivated in Indonesia and India as well for its medicinal bark.
   He seems to have collected plants of every kind - sugar-cane, coffee, cinchona, cocoa, indigo, and many others - and thus demonstrates beyond a doubt that Arnheim's Land will not prove herself behind the rest of the tropical world both in planting and agriculture, when the labour question is settled, and a properly-arranged coolie system enables planters to give the country a proper trial. 1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 222
   German chemists were the first to isolate pure drug chemicals from herbal medicines, with the isolation of morphine from crude opium in 1803 and quinine from the bark of the cinchona tree in 1820. 2001, Leslie Iversen, Drugs: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford, page 8
2. The bark of these plants, which yield quinine and other alkaloids useful in reducing fevers and particularly in combatting malaria.
3. (medicine) Any medicine chiefly composed of the prepared bark of these plants.