HISTORY OF QUININE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1404, 26 January 1899, Page 8

HISTORY OF QUININE.

In an article in the “Leisure Hour” for December on the principal importations into London, Mr W. J. Gordon relates the history of quinine, now largely used in medicine. Of the Peruvian hark only a fiftieth comes from Peru, the cnief source being Madras, Ceylon holding second place ; the two together sending more than all the rest of the world put together. Forty years ago quinine bark all’came from the slopes of the Andes, most of it, as a little does now, packed in hides, carried by hand and on mules and on boats and rafts, for thousands of miles down the Amazon. Known for ages to the natives only in one locality, and so distrusted by them that it was never carried in the wallets of their itinerant doctors—so that it is said with some show of truth that Peru is the only country where Peruvian bark is not used it /irst came into notice in 1638, when the Countess Chinchon, wife of the Viceroy of Peru, lay ill at Lima of a tertian fever. The corregidor of Loxa, hearing of her illness, and knowing the reputed virtues of the quina bark, sent her a parcel of one of its varieties, which, administered by her physician, brought about a rapid and complete cure. The variety of bark was one tnat abounds in cinchonidine, and it was probably this alkaloid, and not quinine, which cured the countess. Two years afterwards the Countess o. Chinchon returned to Spain, bringing with her a supply of the precious quina for the use of the sick on her husband 3 estates, and its reputation gradually spread under the name of Countess s Powder. In 1670 the Jesuits sent some parcels of the powdered bark to Rome to be distributed by Cardinal de Lugo, whence it became known as Cardinal’s Powder and Jesuit’s Bark, with the ridiculous result that no Protestant would have anything to do with it. John Talbor, an English apothe-ary, broke down the prejudice against it in England. By a number of cures he effected by its means, without revealing its name, lie became prominent enough to be knighted by Charles 11. in 1687 ; and next year, as physician in ordinary, he cured'the king of a tertian fever Passing over to France tho same year, ho cured the Dauphin and a few other personages in high places, and sold t*o secret of its preparation to Louis XIV. for 2000 louis d’or, a pension, and a Utlo. It was not until 1815 that the bark was systematically analysed, and after that five years elapsed before the alkaloid quinine was found in it. * Notwithstanding Talbor’s success, the doctors fought bitterly over the new drug, those of Paris more truculently than al! the older men refusing to admit that ’; possessed any good qualities whateve . and one of them going so far as to assert that quin-quino, as it had come to he called, was responsible for 90 sudden deaths in Madrid alone. But it made its way all the same, lielocd along by Sydenhom and Morton, though ihe prejudice agoinst it had not quite died out in " ! 'h early part of the present century, '«n in the Walcheren expedition many - >• • *• fellow’s life was saved by the time'.7 arrival of a Yankee trader with seme b- s' s of bark, after the supply had entirely failed in the camp. Chilian bark sells in London for u 7 l r 's a cw t.—more than three times the puce obtained by Madras bark.