was that the pumas of the country had been observed to eat the bark when they were ill, and that the Indians had learned its value from this circumstance.
The Count and Countess of Chinchon returned to Spain, as has been said, in 1640. They went to live on their estate at Chinchon Castle, about forty miles from Madrid, and their physician, Juan del Vego, followed them and resided at Seville. Vego brought with him a considerable quantity of the bark from Peru, and sold it at 100 reals per pound. Sprengel queries whether the real of Plata or the real of Vellon is to be understood; the latter was worth about 2d., the Plata or silver real being worth about 8d. It is not at all certain that Vego's bark was the first importation of the medicine into Spain. A Spanish physician named Villerobel, quoted by Badus in 1663 in a work on the Peruvian bark, states that a quantity was received in 1632, but was not tried until 1639 (a year after the cure of the Countess, it will be noted). The patient was an ecclesiastic of Alcala de Henarez, near Madrid. However this may be, Vego's reports and the experiments with his bark excited lively interest all through Spain, and from then began a controversy almost as bitter as that between the Galenists and Paracelsists. There were a large number of practitioners who could not bring themselves to believe in any medicine which Galen had not described. It was also alleged by some contemporary writers that a prompt cure of intermittent fevers was not by any means desired by a large number of medical men and apothecaries, who consequently allied themselves in opposition to this very effective bark. This statement is no doubt due to the usual uncharitableness of controversy; but it is possible that the adversaries of the new remedy might at least cling
