The Fever Tree
One of the reasons, it is said, for the popularity of mixing a gin with Indian tonic water is because of the presence of quinine in the latter, a known antidote to malaria.
Quinine comes from the cinchona, a large shrub or small tree indigenous to South America and its bark, also known as Peruvian Bark or Jesuit’s Bark, one of several alkaloids it produces, all of which, with the exception of sulphate of cinchonine, are known for their medicinal properties in reducing or preventing fever. However, the most valuable by far is quinine which, according to a report of the Commissioners of Medical Officers of the Government of India, possesses “more than any other that can be named the confidence of medical practitioners [in India]”.
The name cinchona was once thought to be derived from the Countess of Chinchona, wife of a Spanish envoy of Peru, who, whilst visiting the country in 1630, contracted “an attack of the fever”, from which she was cured by using cinchona bark. Sadly, this story is almost certainly apocryphal, not least because of the variance in spelling, although spelling conventions at the time were not as rigid as they are now. What is certain, though, is that the healing powers of cinchona were known to Jesuit missionaries, who had learned about it “from natives during the years 1620-1630”. By the middle of the 17th century it had arrived in Europe, being used in Jesuit colleges in Genoa, Lyon, Louvain, and Ratisbon.
The arrival of cinchona to Europe must have come as a great relief to those suffering from fever and, particularly, malaria as “treatments” at the time included amputation, purging, blood-letting, the administration of herbs, rest, massage, hydrotherapy, and the use of a controlled diet. More unconventional remedies were to wear amulets, applying split pickled herrings to the feet, placing the fourth book of Homer’s Iliad under the patient’s head, throwing them into a bush in the hopes that in exiting they would leave the fever behind, and “the embrace of bald-headed Brahmin woman at dawn”. As late as 1886 writing in The November issue of The Indian Medical Gazette a Dr J Donaldson reported that he found “orally administered cobwebs of greater value than quinine”.
The first detailed description of a species of the cinchona, Cinchona officinalis, was made by the astronomer, Charles de la Condamine, who visited Quito in 1735 on a mission to measure an arc of the meridian, although it was found to have little therapeutic value. The first living plants seen in Europe were from the Cinchona calisaya species, grown at the Jardin des Plantes from seeds collected by Hugh Weddell in Bolivia in 1846.
For almost two centuries supplies of cinchona bark were imported into Europe from the countries where the tree grew naturally. There were four methods of harvesting the bark – stripping and renewing, scraping, coppicing, and uprooting – the latter method being employed to such an extent in South America that it led to a serious depletion in the number of cinchonas. The bark was then dried, crushed into small pieces and turned into tinctures, Robert Talbor, the physician of Charles II, being credited with the “elaboration and spread of cinchona bark therapy” in England.
Initially, there was much prejudice against cinchona in Protestant western Europe, given its particular association with the Jesuits, but as Ignace Voullonne observed, writing in the early 18th century, “the promptness of its effect and its infallibility finally triumphed over the multiple reproaches that were heaped upon it…by ignorance, prejudice, the ignorance of sects [and] the hatred of the parties”.
