was called the kroton, and Theophrastus and Dioscorides describe the Palma Christi seeds as kroton seeds. Curiously the name kroton has been applied in America to the cockroach, not from any association with ticks, but from a belief that the insects came from the Croton River when the water from that source was brought to New York in 1842. The name of castor oil is supposed to have been given to the oil in consequence of a mistaken idea in the Western Indies that the plant which yielded the seeds was Agnus Castus. There was, however, a castor oil and compound castor oil in medicinal use in England and other countries until the eighteenth century. The simple oil was made by digesting castorum in oil and boiling it with wine until the latter had all evaporated. The compound oil contained besides a number of aromatic gums and spices. Possibly the taste of the oil from the Palma Christi seeds recalled that from the old oil of castor, and the name may thus have been transferred.
Cinchona.
It is not possible to determine from the legends and reports collected by the many competent naturalists who visited Peru in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with the special object of investigating the history of the cinchona trees whether it was known or used as a medicine by the natives before its virtues were ascertained by Europeans.
Peru was discovered in 1513, and became subject to Spain about the middle of the sixteenth century. But Hanbury points out that no reference to the bark as a febrifuge has been found earlier than the beginning of the seventeenth century. It was reported by La
