Spanish missionaries

A council of Spanish missionaries in Peru condemns the native practice of chewing coca leaves. 

Folklore Spanish missionaries in South America regarded the flower of this herb as a symbol of Christ s passion, the three stigmas representing the nails, the five anthers the wounds and the ten sepals the apostles present. The herb was used in native North American medicine, especially by the Houma tribe, who put it into drinking water as a tonic. It became popular as a treatment for insomnia in the nineteenth century and was included in the US National Formulary from 1916 to 1936 (Bown, 2003 British Herbal Medicine Association, 1983 Giuenwald el al, 2002 Hutchens, 1973 Tierra, 1998). 

The writings of Fray Bernardino Sahagun (1499-1590), a Spanish missionary who lived with and studied the Indians of Mexico, provide the earliest documented information about peyote. He writes that the Chichimecas and the Toltec Indians probably used peyote as early as 300 B.C. 

The Spanish missionaries took a dim view of coca because they saw it as idolatry and thus a barrier to conversion. Because of its social importance, however, the Spanish eventually took over coca production and distribution and used coca as a tool to control the conquered population. 

Spanish conquistadors introduced coca to Europe and the original missionaries unsuccessfully attempted to ban it use. The Catholic Church viewed its use as an act of paganism and a remnant of native religious ceremonies. Despite this position and the Church s destruction of cultured coca crops, cocas widespread use among many isolated cultures prevented significant... 

Cinchona and its alkaloids, particularly quinine, have been used for many years in the treatment of malaria, a disease caused by protozoa, of which the most troublesome is Plasmodium falciparum. The beneficial effects of cinchona bark were first discovered in South America in the 1630s, and the bark was then brought to Europe by Jesuit missionaries. Religious intolerance initially restricted its universal acceptance, despite the widespread occurrence of malaria in Europe and elsewhere. The name cinchona is a mis-spelling derived from Chinchon. In an often quoted tale, now historically disproved, the Spanish Countess of Chinchon, wife of the viceroy of Peru, was reputedly cured of malaria by the bark. For... 

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