curative properties discovered? The oldest
surviving written record of its use to treat
malaria dates from 1633, long after the Spanish
colonisation of South America. One tale claims
it was discovered when feverish Jesuit priests
recovered after drinking water from a lake
containing fallen cinchona trees. But the
fact that local people knew cinchona as the
“fever tree” suggests that they had been using
it long before the Spanish arrived, although
not for malaria, which was unknown in the
Andes. Travelling in Ecuador in the 18th
century, French explorer Charles Marie de La
Condamine wrote that the indigenous people
there had cottoned on to its powers after
watching mountain lions chewing its bark.
However it was discovered, before the 1630s
were out, news of “the cure” and supplies of
bark had reached Spain. Legend has it that in
1638, the Countess of Chinchón, wife of the
Viceroy of Peru, was dying of fever – but was
saved by the bark. Grateful, she sailed back to
Spain to spread the word. More than a century
later, the botanist Carl Linnaeus reinforced
the story by naming the tree cinchona (his
science being rather better than his spelling).
The tale has been thoroughly debunked, yet
persists even now.
It is more likely that Jesuit priests returning
from South America introduced the cure
to Europe. From the start, it was known as
“Jesuit’s bark”, a name that saw the Protestant
English and Dutch pooh-pooh it as a “popish
fraud”. As it so obviously worked, they didn’t
hold out too long, though. Supplies of the
bark spread rapidly across Europe, where
malaria remained a scourge of low-lying
and marshy regions well into the 20th century.
By 1677, Jesuit’s bark was listed in the London
Pharmacopoeia as an “excellent thing against
all sorts of agues”.
For two centuries, Europe imported
cinchona bark from South America. The trade
was highly destructive. “Unlike cinnamon, for
example, local people would fell whole trees to
harvest their bark,” says Alexandre Antonelli,
Kew’s director of science and an expert on
cinchona. In 1802, while travelling in Chile,
German explorer Alexander von Humboldt
noted how older, thicker trees had become
scarce. “He was alarmed by the unsustainable
harvest and the impact on Europe’s supplies,”
says Antonelli.He wasn’t alone. By the mid-19th century,
demand for cinchona bark had soared,
following the isolation of quinine and trials
showing it to be an effective prophylactic
against malaria as well as a cure. “Europeans
wanted to control quality and quantity by
growing cinchona in their own plantations
in the tropical parts of their empires,” says
Nesbitt. But Andean people were aware that
if foreigners acquired the trees, their
livelihoods were at risk, so getting hold of
seeds and young plants required subterfuge.
There was the prospect of arrest, or worse:
in Peru, rumour had it that anyone caught
stealing trees would have their feet chopped
off. “But the political instability in the region
made it a good time for biopiracy,” says Nesbitt.Ill-gotten gains
Botanists and explorers did acquire seedlings
and seeds, but all too often the young plants
died and seeds grew into trees that produced
little quinine. The amount of quinine varies
from species to species, with concentrations
ranging from 0.2 per cent to 13 per cent.
“Collecting seed was a gamble,” says Walker.
“It could be 10 years before you knew if your
trees were useful.”
Half the bark samples at Kew come from the
collections of John Eliot Howard, an English
pharmacist and “quinologist” who spent his
career trying to solve the riddle of which
imported barks were best and where exactly
they came from. “Howard had to do ‘reverse
botany’, trying to connect a particular bark to
a species of tree and a geographical origin so
that collectors could target the best trees for
cultivation,” says Walker. Many samples come
with details of Howard’s chemical analyses
attached. They were remarkably accurate,
as a recent reanalysis shows.
By the 1880s, British and Dutch plantations
in India and Indonesia had destroyed the
South American trade. It never recovered.
Quinine remained the most important
antimalarial drug until the 1940s, whensynthetic alternatives became available.
“Cinchona might have saved more human
lives than any other plant,” says Antonelli.
Quinine – extracted from bark – still has a
role in medicine, treating leg cramps and
rheumatoid arthritis. It is also used to treat
malaria that is resistant to synthetic drugs.
So much for tonic water’s health-giving
flavour, how about its other half – the
refreshingly bubbly water? That, too,
owes its origins to people’s never-ending
quest for well-being.
Spa waters and mineral waters have an
age-old reputation as health-boosting drinks.
Their popularity skyrocketed in the 18th
century when fizzy water made its debut,
courtesy of English chemical whizz Joseph
Priestley. In 1767, he invented a way to dissolve
“fixed air” (carbon dioxide) in water to add
sparkle – or the more delicious-sounding
“bubbling scintillation”. Soon, aerated waters
were being sold for disorders as varied as gout
and indigestion and as a general panacea.Your good health! Tonic
water, created to promote
well-being, was found
to go rather well with gin“ It’s a tale of discovery, adventure,
imperial ambition and biopiracy”
MAURIZIOPOLESE/ALA
MYSTOC
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