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The history of the Peruvian Bark would furnish a very curious illustration of the overbearing influence of authority in giving celebrity to a medicine, or in depriving it of that reputation to which its virtues entitle it. This heroic remedy was first brought to Spain in the year 1632, and we learn from Villerobel that it remained for seven years in that country before any trial was made of its powers, a certain ecclesiastic of Alcala being the first person in Spain to whom it was administered in the year 1639; but even at this period its use was limited, and it would have sunk into oblivion but for the supreme power of the Roman church, by whose auspices it was enabled to gain a temporary triumph over the passions and prejudices which opposed its introduction; Innocent the Tenth, at the intercession of Cardinal de Lugo, who was formerly a Spanish Jesuit, ordered that the nature and effects of it should be duly examined, and upon being reported as both innocent and salutary, it immediately rose into public notice;^[64] its career, however, was suddenly stopped by its having unfortunately failed in the autumn of 1652 to cure Leopold, Archduke of Austria, of a Quartan Intermittent; this disappointment kindled the resentment of the prince’s principal physician, Chifletius, who published a violent philippic against the virtues of Peruvian Bark, which so fomented the prejudices against its use, that it had nearly fallen into total neglect and disrepute.