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Reading María Osorio's thesis, which focuses on the circulation of cinchona bark at the end of the eighteenth century, reveals the outstanding contributions of the Isthmian naturalist Miguel de Santisteban in the viceregal court of New Granada. From that time on, recent historiographical references about the isthmian have followed one another numerically. The historical confrontation between the isthmians Miguel de Santisteban de Silva (1691-1776) and Sebastián José López Ruíz (1741-1832) in the context of the enlightened renewal of the Bourbon monarchy shifted our interest from the study of Sebastián López's scientific preeminence in the discovery of the cinchona tree in the vicinity of Santa Fe de Bogotá, to that of the economic exploitation of the bark of cinchona, that in the eighteenth century confronted four European maritime powers: Spain, Holland, Great Britain, and France. Throughout that century, both characters played a preeminent role in the discovery, exploitation, and medicinal use of cinchona. On the other hand, these naturalists broadly covered the economic and industrial panorama of the viceroyalty of New Granada, from metallurgy to mathematics and from naturalism to the reform of education and health.