ork
of malaria. It is the most powerful cause, not merely of the
extinction of the white colonist in the tropics, but of the peculiar
degeneracy--physical, mental, and moral--which is apt to steal over even
the survivors who succeed in retaining a foothold. Two particularly
ingenious investigators have even advanced the theory that the
importation of malaria into the islands of Greece and the Italian
peninsula by soldiers returning from African and Southern Asiatic
conquests had much to do with accelerating, if not actually promoting,
the classic decay of both of these superb civilizations.

To come nearer home, there can be little question that the baneful,
persistent influence of malaria, together with the hookworm disease, has
had much to do both with the degeneracy of the Southern "cracker," or
"mean white," and with those wild outbursts of primitive ferocity in all
classes which take the form of White Cap raids and lynching mobs.

However this may be, the disease and the colonization habit brought in a
crude way their own remedy. The Spanish conquerors of Peru were told by
the natives that a certain bark which grew upon the slopes of the Andes
was a sovereign remedy for those terrible ague seizures. Indian remedies
did not stand as high in popular esteem as they do now; but they were in
desperate straits and jumped at the chance. To their delight, it proved
a positive specific, and a Spanish lady of rank, the Countess Chincona,
was so delighted with her own recovery that she carried back a package
of the precious Peruvian bark on her return to Europe, and endeavored to
introduce it. So furious was the opposition of the Church, however, to
this "pagan" remedy that she was completely defeated in her praiseworthy
attempt and was obliged to confine her ministrations to those who
belonged to her, the peasantry on her own estate. About half a century
later, the new remedy excited so much discussion by the numerous cures
that it effected, that it was considered worthy of a special council of
the Jesuits, who formally pronounced it suitable for the use of the
faithful, thereby attaching to it for many years the name of "Jesuit's
bark." Virtue, however, is sometimes rewarded in this world, and the
devoted and enlightened countess has, all unknown to herself, attained
immortality by attaching her name, Chincona, softened into _cinchona_,
and hardened into _quinine_, to the greatest therapeutic gift of the
gods to mankind. I