A few species are reportedly naturalized in Central America, Jamaica, French Polynesia, Sulawesi, Saint Helena in the South Atlantic, and São Tomé and Príncipe off the coast of tropical Africa, and others have been cultivated in India and Java, where they have formed hybrids.

These were the only effective treatments against malaria during the height of European colonialism, which made them of great economic and political importance.

[2] The artificial synthesis of quinine in 1944, an increase in resistant forms of malaria, and the emergence of alternate therapies eventually ended large-scale economic interest in Cinchona cultivation.

Cinchona alkaloids show promise in treating Plasmodium falciparum malaria, which has evolved resistance to synthetic drugs.

[3] Carl Linnaeus named the genus in 1742, based on a claim that the plant had cured the wife of the Count of Chinchón, a Spanish viceroy in Lima, in the 1630s, though the veracity of this story has been disputed.

[citation needed] Cinchona plants belong to the family Rubiaceae and are large shrubs or small trees with evergreen foliage, growing 5 to 15 m (16 to 49 ft) in height.

[5] Linnaeus described the genus based on the species Cinchona officinalis, which is found only in a small region of Ecuador and is of little medicinal significance.

[5][8] The febrifugal properties of bark from trees now known to be in the genus Cinchona were used by many South American cultures prior to European contact.

The traditional story connecting Cinchona species with malaria treatment was first recorded by Italian physician Sebastiano Bado in 1663.

[10][11] It tells of the wife of Luis Jerónimo de Cabrera, 4th Count of Chinchón and Viceroy of Peru, who fell ill in Lima with a tertian fever.

Quina bark was mentioned by Fray Antonio de La Calancha in 1638 as coming from a tree in Loja (Loxa).

[16] Haggis argued that qina and Jesuit's bark actually referred to Myroxylon peruiferum, or Peruvian balsam, and that this was an item of importance in Spanish trade in the 1500s.

The "fever tree" was finally described carefully by astronomer Charles Marie de la Condamine, who visited Quito in 1735 on a quest to measure an arc of the meridian.

He proposed a Spanish expedition to search for plants of commercial value, which was approved in 1783 and was continued after his death in 1808 by his nephew Sinforoso Mutis.

English explorer Clements Markham went to collect plants that were introduced in Sri Lanka and the Nilgiris of southern India in 1860.

The yields of quinine in the cultivated trees were low and time was needed to develop sustainable methods to extract bark.

Mamani was caught and beaten by Bolivian officials, leading to his death, but Ledger obtained seeds containing high levels of quinine.

The Royal Society of London published in its first year (1666) "An account of Dr. Sydenham's book, entitled, Methodus curandi febres .

After Talbor's death, the French king published this formula: seven grams of rose leaves, two ounces of lemon juice and a strong decoction of the cinchona bark served with wine.

[33] In 1681 Água de Inglaterra was introduced into Portugal from England by Dr. Fernando Mendes who, similarly, "received a handsome gift from (King Pedro) on condition that he should reveal to him the secret of its composition and withhold it from the public".

[34] In 1738, Sur l'arbre du quinquina, a paper written by Charles Marie de La Condamine, lead member of the expedition, along with Pierre Godin and Louis Bouger that was sent to Ecuador to determine the length of a degree of the 1/4 of meridian arc in the neighbourhood of the equator, was published by the French Academy of Sciences.

The cultivation (initially of C. succirubra (now C. pubescens) and later of C. calisaya[42]) was extended through the work of George King and others into the hilly terrain of Darjeeling District of Bengal.

[24][43][44] In 1865, "New Virginia" and "Carlota Colony" were established in Mexico by Matthew Fontaine Maury, a former Confederate in the American Civil War.

Postwar Confederates were enticed there by Maury, now the "Imperial Commissioner of Immigration" for Emperor Maximillian of Mexico, and Archduke of Habsburg.

[47] During World War II, the Japanese conquered Java and the United States lost access to the cinchona plantations that supplied war-critical quinine medication.

[48] As well as being ultimately successful in their primary aim, these expeditions also identified new species of plants[48] and created a new chapter in international relations between the United States and other nations in the Americas.

[49] The bark of trees in this genus is the source of a variety of alkaloids, the most familiar of which is quinine, an antipyretic (antifever) agent especially useful in treating malaria.

The alkaloid mixture or its sulphated form mixed in alcohol and sold as quinetum was however very bitter and caused nausea, among other side effects.