106
THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
in 1630; that the grateful lady, when she recovered, caused
quantities of this valuable bark to be procured on her behalf,
and when she returned to Europe in 1639, had the bark dis-
tributed to the ague-stricken tenantry on her husband's estates;
that the sufferers who benefited by her benevolence termed
the remedy the Countess's Powder; and that, under this name,
the new drug found its way into European medical practice. The
fact that there is no official record of the receipt by Juan de Vega
of the Cinchona Bark which cured the Countess of Chincon
does not prove the story we were taught to be an early example
of the kind of thing we are accustomed to find in our morning
journals. But when we remember that the Count and Countess
both suffered from malaria, almost from the time of their arrival
in Peru, what surprises us is, not that the Corregidor should
present them with what had cured him in 1630, but why it took
him eight years to think of doing so ! Our suspicion that the
story, as we were told it, may be a propagandist combination
of two distinct happenings is strengthened by the existence of
the very different one that the Cinchona Bark with which Juan
de Vega cured the Countess was given him by an Indian maid
of high birth, devoted to the Vicereine, who braved the displeasure
of her people by revealing a secret remedy they wished to conceal
from their Spanish conquerors.
In any case we know now that the story, as we have been
told it, resembles modern journalism in certain other particulars.
It is true that in 1621 the fourth Count of Chincon married the
famous Court beauty Ana d'Osorio. But that lady had died
before 1628, when the Count married, as his second wife,
Francisca Henriquez de Ribera, and was appointed Viceroy of
Peru. It was the Countess Francisca who entered Lima in state
as his consort in 1629; it was she whom Dr. Juan de Vega
cured of malaria by means of Cinchona Bark in 1638. The
distribution by her of Cinchona Bark in Europe is a figment of
fancy ; the poor lady never returned to Europe: she died and
was buried at Carthagena in Colombia in 1641. That her husband
may, as a good Viceroy, have taken steps to create a market in
Spain for a valuable Peruvian product we can well believe: that
he should, as a good husband, have approved the use, by those
who prescribed the drug in Europe, of the name of Countess's
Powder, we have little reason to doubt, though the historian