The Bois de Boulogne had once been a remnant of the enormous Huwood Forest. During the Second Empire, Napoleon III had ordered a parkland like London's Hyde Park to be built there. Before that, it had been a primeval forest much like the Forbidden Forest, full of natural "wild charm."
As early as the seventeenth century, Jesuit missionaries had discovered that the Indians of Peru steeped cinchona bark in water to treat high fevers, and even smoked it. It produced a peculiar fragrance and could make up for a shortage of tobacco. At first, Pope Urban VIII, the one who had put Galileo on trial, strongly opposed the practice and issued an edict ordering that everyone who smoked this newly imported tobacco be expelled from the Church.
Others were more open to the innovation. Anna, the wife of the Spanish governor of Peru, had once unfortunately contracted malaria. After taking powder made from cinchona bark, Lady Anna recovered. In 1643, a Belgian doctor ground this cinchona bark into powder as a fever medicine and began using it in Europe to treat malaria-induced fevers, calling it quinine. Even Emperor Kangxi recovered from malaria because of this medicine.
In 1742, the Swedish botanist Carl named the tree after the governor's wife. Her name was officially spelled cinchona, but an h was omitted in the spelling, and so it became cinchona.
Pierre Peltier was twenty-four that year. Like Fresnel, who had attended the Second Industrial Exposition, he was a student at the Paris Industrial School. He had many fanciful ideas, but chemistry required a great deal of equipment, and some equipment could not necessarily be bought even with money. He was constrained in many ways in this regard. Later, through Fresnel's introduction, he entered Georgiana's "greenhouse."
Chaptal was a highly respected chemist, but