Pierre-Joseph Pelletier (1788–1842), Joseph Bienaimé Caventou (1795–1877)
Conflicting tales have circulated regarding the history of cinchona, but there is little doubt that cinchona was effective for the treatment of fever and malaria, thanks to its active chemical, quinine. Written records of the medical use of cinchona date back to 1633, when a Jesuit publication described how indigenous Peruvians used the bark to successfully treat their “ague,” a malarial type of fever. The most popular tale—albeit of very questionable historic accuracy—relates that, in 1639, the bark miraculously cured the Countess of Chinchón, wife of the Viceroy of Peru, of ague. Large quantities of the powdered bark were shipped to Spain in 1640, and European physicians very rapidly adopted it. The drug was variously called Peruvian bark; cinchona bark, an unintentional misspelling of the Countess of Chinchón’s name; Jesuit’s bark for its primary importers, distributors, and users; and Cardinal’s bark, in honor of Cardinal de Lugo, its chief advocate in Rome.
Protestants, who discredited the drug, did not view endorsement by the Jesuits positively. However, its popularity grew immeasurably in the 1670s, when the English charlatan Robert Talbot successfully treated Charles II in England and Louis XIV’s son in France of malaria with his cinchona-containing secret formula. When the secret ingredient was disclosed, cinchona’s popularity soared. The cinchona bark contains two important alkaloids long used in medicine: the antimalarial drug quinine, isolated in 1820, and quinine’s optical isomer quinidine, isolated in 1833 and used for abnormal heart rhythms.
In the mid-nineteenth century, the Dutch smuggled cinchona seeds from Bolivia and cultivated extensive plantations in Java; by 1918, the Dutch were the world’s major supplier of quinine. Malaria was a major health threat facing the armed forces in Asia during World War II. After the 1942 Japanese occupation of Java, the Allies’ supply of quinine evaporated. This fueled the effort to synthesize quinine in the laboratory—an effort that proved successful in 1944.
SEE ALSO Alkaloids (1806), Quinine (1820), Quinidine (1914), Chloroquine (1947).
In this seventeenth-century engraving, Peru offers a branch of cinchona to Science.