de Lugo, making a journey to Paris in 1649, found the king, Louis XIV, himself suffering at the time from an intermittent fever. He recommended to him the use of the bark, and Louis took it and quickly recovered. The powder of the Cardinal, the Powder of the Fathers the Jesuits' Powder, by which names among others it was known, consequently came into strong demand. But these titles were largely responsible for the reaction which almost drove cinchona out of practice. Protestant fears and prejudices were added to the orthodox opposition of the Galenists, and besides, many practitioners administered the bark ignorantly, in too small or too large doses, while the high prices at which it was sold led to fraudulent substitution, which more than anything else discredited the bark as a medicine. Sprengel quotes complaints from the Cardinal de Lugo, the apothecary of the College of Medicine at Rome, and Vincent Protospatario, a physician at Naples, who alleged that the Spanish merchants were sending into Italy instead of the true Peruvian bark various other astringent barks devoid of any aromatic taste, but flavoured up to the necessary bitterness by aloes.
Although Sydenham in England, and a number of eminent physicians on the Continent, studied the proper methods of administration and the suitable doses of bark, it fell to a practitioner whose methods went a long way to justify charges of charlatanry firmly to establish cinchona in professional and popular favour.
Robert Talbor was assistant with an apothecary at Cambridge named Dear. It has been ascertained that in 1663 he had been entered as a sizar at St. John's College for five years, but there is no indication that he took a degree. In his writings he states that he was largely indebted to a member of the University of the
