The History of Quinine as Anti-Malarial Medication

What is a Quinine?

Quinine is an alkaloid obtained from the bark of several species of the cinchona tree. Until the development of synthetic drugs, quinine was used as the primary treatment of malaria, a disease that kills over 100 million people a year. The cinchona tree is native to the eastern slopes of the Andes Mountains in South America. In these modern days, this tree has been cultivated in several countries including India, and Indonesia. The cinchona tree contains more than 20 alkaloids of which quinine and quinidine are the most important. Quinidine is one of the medications that are used in treating cardiac arrhythmias.

Quinine: From South America to Asia

The cinchona tree had been widely used by the native Indian of South American. They mostly used this tree bark to treat fevers for centuries until the Spanish conquerors arrived in Peru. Shortly after, the Spanish people learned about the importance of quinine from the Peruvian in the beginning of seventeenth century. At that time, the quinine was popular inform of powdered "Peruvian Bark" as this name was mentioned in religious journals by the Jesuits in 1633.

Quinine: From South America to Asia

The name of cinchona tree was given to dedicate the wife of the Spanish viceroy to Peru, Countess Anna del Chinchon. A popular story is that the Countess was cured of the ague (malaria was known as this term at that time) in 1638. The use of quinine for fevers was included in medical literature in 1643. Even though it had been mentioned in medical literature, quinine did not directly accept by the medical society, until Charles II was cured of the malaria by a London apothecary at the end of the seventeenth century. Afterwards, people started to believe the ability of quinine for treating both fever and malaria, and this begun the exploration of quinine.

The search of "Cortex Peruanus", a term coined by the London apothecary, started in 1735. It was Joseph de Jussie, a French botanist, who was supported financially by the French, sailed in an expedition to South America for collecting detailed information about the cinchona tree. Unluckily, as Jussieu was preparing to return to France, after 30 years of research, all of his works were stolen. Subsequently, his partner, Charles Marie de la Condamine tried to transfer the seedlings of cinchona tree to Europe, but his attempts were not successful. As a results, information related to the cinchona tree and its medicinal bark reached the European in a very slow movements.

As European countries continued extensive colonization in Africa, India, and South America, the need for quinine was high particularly due to the malaria in these tropical countries. The Dutch and British cultivated cinchona trees in their East Indian colonies, but they had a very low composition of quinine. A British collector, Charles Ledger, obtained some seeds of a relatively potent Bolivian species, Chincona ledgeriana, As England was doubtful regarding to quinine composition, the Dutch bought these seeds from him, and planted them in Java. During 100 years, their planting had been successfully to monopolize the world-trade of quinine as the world's-demands in quinine due to the World-War I and II. As the Java was controlled by the Japanese, the dutch attempted to take the seeds out of Java, but they had no time to grow new trees to supply the demands.

Quinine: Scientific Approach

Scientific studies about quinine were first published by Alexander von Humboldt and Aime Bonpland in the first part of the 18th century. The quinine alkaloid was separated from the powdered bark and named as quinine in 1820 by two French doctors. The name quinine comes from the Amerindian word for the cinchona tree, quinaquina, which means bark of barks.

As the trade of quinine was growing higher, the United States sent a group of botanists to Columbia to obtain enough quinine to use throughout the war. In 1944, synthetic quinine was developed by American scientists. These artificial quinine were proven to be very effective against malaria and had fewer side effects, and the need for natural quinine subsided. Over the years, the causative malarial parasite became resistant to synthetic quinine preparations, however interestingly, the parasites have not developed a full resistance to natural quinine yet.