A Brief History of Quinine
Thousands of years ago, across Africa, Asia, and Europe: Malaria gets real aggressive and starts beating the crap out of humanity. Malaria is a blood-borne parasite carried by mosquitoes. People may not have identified this as the cause of malaria, but they sure could recognize the symptoms: chills, shakes, fever, generally feeling like you’re going to die, and actually dying.
Meanwhile, thousands of years ago, in the Americas: While they have some of their own health problems, malaria is not one of them. They do have this one kind of tree (scientific name Cinchona), of which they would grind up the bark and use it to treat fevers.
Zoom forward to about the 1500′s: Europeans arrive in the Americas and start trashing the place. Including, of course, introducing malaria. Rome sends out its legions of Jesuits to convert and loot the populace, because the it’s the Roman Catholic Church, what else is new.
It’s the 1630′s: Jesuits see this tree bark being used for fevers and wonder: huh. Could this miraculous powder help with malarial fevers? Turns out that the answer is yes.
Sometime between 1630 and 1645: One of these missionaries brings the bark back to Rome. Rome has really bad problem with malaria. Like, ‘malaria might have contributed to the fall of the Roman empire’ levels of bad. So all the Catholic clergy were like “fuck yeah, that’s one less thing we have to worry about while in Rome vying for power.”
1655: I was serious about that last part. To quote:
“Not a single participant in the papal conclave of 1655 died of malaria - the first time in recorded history that a Roman convocation had been so spared.”
Pan over to England: Oliver Cromwell is doing his best to bring the joys of Puritanism to all of the British Isles. Since this tree medicine is clearly Catholic in origin, Cromwell refuses to be Tainted by anything from That Church and will not use it. He proceeds to die of complications related to malaria.
1670, Still in England: An apothecary (proto-pharmacist), Robert Talbor, creates a secret formula that cures malaria. His cure DEFINITELY, 100%, does not contain any of that terrible Jesuit powder, why how dare you even suggest such a thing, what an appalling accusation. Of course, people eventually realized that it was indeed Jesuit powder, but their desire to not die was stronger than their desire to stick it to the Catholic Church.
1820 (Big time jump, cause chemistry is hard, yo): Two French scientists isolate the compound that actually cures malaria and name it quinine. This is really exciting, but they still can’t synthesize it. Which means if the West wants to not die of malaria, they need to get their quinine supplies from cinchona trees in South America. And Europe really needs to not die of malaria if they’re going to continue colonizing Africa, India, and everything else in the tropics.
Quick cut to the British in India: British soldiers in India have to drink quinine infused water, aka tonic water, as a medicinal. Quinine, however, is very bitter, and the soldiers were like, whelp, this is awful, if we have to drink it we might as well add some gin. Thus, the gin and tonic was born.
1850′s: Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru are trying to maintain a tight monopoly on the lucrative quinine trade. Various Europeans attempt to smuggle out seeds and saplings of the cinchona tree, only to discover that certain species do not produce nearly as much quinine as others.
1861: Dude named Ledger tries to sell some seeds he got to the British government, but they tell him “no, last time you sold us cinchona seeds they were worthless.” So instead he sells them to Dutch, who plant them in Java. Lo and behold, these trees contain a very high quinine content.
By 1930: 97% of the world’s commercially consumed quinine is grown in Java, in Dutch-controlled Indonesia. Now the Dutch are the ones with the quinine monopoly.
1940 aka oh shit it’s World War II: The Nazis take the Netherlands, along with pretty much all of Europe’s quinine reserves, in yet another shining example of why drug monopolies are bad.
1942 and it’s still WWII: The Japanese take Java, which means the Allies now have zero access to quinine. This is a huge problem for the US in the Pacific Theater, where more American troops are dying of malaria than from Japanese weapons.
At the Smithsonian Institution: The U.S. military asks botanist Raymond Fosberg to go to South America and find more cinchona trees. So off he goes, traveling between Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, asking natives where he might find some trees. He was somewhat successful, sending 12.5 million pounds of bark to the USA in 1943 and 1944.
However, 1944, in a remote Colombian town: Fosberg hears German voices in the hotel room below his, and late that night there’s a knock at his door. It’s two Nazis, who confront him with, “We’ve been following you for weeks. We know who you are. We know what you’re doing here. …Would the USA be interesting in purchasing a large amount of pure quinine? We smuggled a bunch out of Germany.” I imagine Fosberg was quite happy to not be killed by Nazis.
After the war: Synthetic antimalarial drugs are finally created, meaning that while still important, quinine is no longer as essential as it once was.
Most of this is sourced from the chapter on quinine in my ethnobotany textbook. I wanted to read an entire book on the history of quinine before starting this, but I know myself well enough to know that if I tried to do that this would never get written. The textbook is from 1996, so apologies if any of my information is out of date.
