Jesuit's bark
- noun
- /ˈdʒɛz.ju.ɪts bɑrk/
- Archaic
:
corteza de quina
- Jesuit's bark has been used for centuries to treat malaria due to its effectiveness in providing quinine.
Examples
-
He arrived in July and used the remainder of the year to travel to Panama, where he found several plants of medicinal value, such as balsam fern and Jesuit's bark, that he hoped to send to Georgia.
Academic text (2009) -
In so many ways, the future of Britain's colonial enterprise depended on a cheap and readily available supply of life-giving Jesuit's bark (Honigsbaum 2002, 87-90).
Academic text (2018) -
Unlike so many other exciting new ethnobotanical discoveries of the time that ultimately proved ineffective, Jesuit's bark truly was a miracle drug.
Academic text (2018) -
The bitter wood of this species compared favorably with Jesuit's bark (Cinchona sp.) for its ability to lower body temperature, and over time, according to Stedman, made Quassi a rich man.
Academic text (2018) -
The traditional medicine of Jesuit's bark is harvested from cinchona trees and is valued for its quinine content.
-
In remote areas, locals often rely on Jesuit's bark as a natural remedy for malaria and other fevers.
Synonyms
Dried bark from a tree used to make medicine for malaria
The bark of South American trees that people use to make medicine for malaria
Dried bark from a South American tree that contains quinine used to treat malaria
Bark from a Colombian tree people used long ago to make medicine for malaria
Surface Forms
Morphology
Jesuit's + bark
The phrase directly names a kind of tree 'bark' associated with 'Jesuit', so a learner who knows both words can infer that it refers to bark connected to Jesuits or an eponymous type of bark. However, the specific identification as cinchona bark and its medicinal/antimalarial use (quinine) requires historical or cultural knowledge beyond the literal constituents, making the connection only partially transparent.
Etymology
Jesuit's bark may come from Jesuit priests who brought a special tree bark from South America to Europe as a medicine. People used that bark to treat 'malaria' and other 'fevers', so the name came to mean the medicinal bark used to fight those illnesses.
