Peruvian bark

See cinchona.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Peruvian bark

(Plants) another name for cinchona²

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Noun

Peruvian bark - medicinal bark of cinchona trees; source of quinine and quinidine

cinchona, cinchona bark, Jesuit's bark

chinchona, cinchona - any of several trees of the genus Cinchona

bark - tough protective covering of the woody stems and roots of trees and other woody plants

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

Some people, however indifferent they may become after a considerable space of absence, always contrive to leave a pleasant impression just at parting; not so Hunsden, a conference with him affected one like a draught of Peruvian bark; it seemed a concentration of the specially harsh, stringent, bitter; whether, like bark, it invigorated, I scarcely knew.

View in context

North painted this month's cover image, "Foliage, Flowers, and Seed-vessels of a Peruvian Bark Tree," while traveling in South America during the early 1870s.

Portrait of the coveted cinchona

* China officinalis (Peruvian bark, the source of quinine):

The homeopathic treatment of malaria

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