Cinchona bark (quinine) for malaria
Corteza de quina como remedio contra la malaria
- Date
- c. 1630-1640 · confidence medium
- Place
- Loja, Ecuador (Viceroyalty of Peru) / Rome (Jesuit diffusion)
- Credited to
- Quechua healers; Jesuits of Peru; spread in Europe by Cardinal Juan de Lugo
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
The bark of the Cinchona tree, whose alkaloid (quinine, isolated in 1820) cured the tertian fevers of malaria. The first effective specific drug in the European pharmacopoeia, and an example of the transfer of indigenous American knowledge.
The legend of the Countess of Chinchón (1638) is apocryphal; the first printed reference dates from 1638–1642 (Calancha). It is debated whether indigenous peoples used it against malaria, a disease that arrived with the Europeans.
What it led to
- Specific pharmacology, as against humoral medicine
- European colonisation of malarial regions (Africa, Asia) in the 18th–19th centuries
- The global trade in medicinal drugs and economic botany
- Confessional debate (Protestants rejected the 'Jesuit's powder')
Built on
- Traditional Andean medicine
- Carreira da Índia trade
Made possible
- Historia naturalis Brasiliae (Piso and Marcgrave)1637-1648
- Royal Botanical Expedition to New Granada1783-1816
- Cinchona ledgeriana (high-yield cinchona)1865
- Java cinchona plantations and the ledgeriana variety1854-1880
- Quinine isolated (Pelletier and Caventou, 1820)
- Cinchona plantations in Java and India
- Tonic water