1 - Origin Stories

Summary

Chapter 1 exposes and examines the movement of narratives, and cultural imaginaries, about cinchona across the Atlantic World around 1800, by studying the circulation of ‘origin myths’ about how the ‘wonderful’, ‘admirable’ medicinal properties of cinchona had first come to the knowledge of mankind. The chapter scrutinizes the various story elements present in contemporary origin stories – the natives’ alleged secrecy, closeness to nature and unlettered simplicity – exposing them as widespread, and long-lived, topoi, woven from the epistemic fabric of the Atlantic World. Laying ground for subsequent chapters, it argues that these topoi ultimately served to make sense of, promote and propagate the bark’s ‘wonderful properties’ – as much, or more so, as the discerning appreciation of its supposed medical ‘effects’, or the support of prominent regal and religious advocates historians have tended to privilege in their accounts of the bark’s rise.