2 4 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



course, gave little heed to these inane disputations ; the value of 

 cinchona was beyond the power of the faculty either to discover or to 

 obscure. But, on behalf of the faculty, it remains to add that cin- 

 chona found powerful advocates within it from the first ; and it will 

 not surprise any one to be told that these were generally the men 

 whom medical history, on other grounds as well, has extolled or at 

 any rate saved from oblivion. Such were Sydenham and Morton in 

 London, Albertini in Bologna, Peyer in Schaffhausen, and Werlhof 

 in Hanover. The therapeutic position of cinchona was firmly estab- 

 lished by Torti's treatise on the treatment of periodical fevers, pub- 

 lished at Modena in 1709. 



The next step in the relief of malarious sickness on the grand 

 scale was the extraction of the alkaloid quinine from the cinchona- 

 bark. The powdered bark was not only very unpalatable, but it was 

 cumbrous to carry and dispense, and, although the principle of the 

 remedy remained the same, it has proved of infinitely greater service in 

 the form of quinine, and in the form of the cheap alkaloidal mixture 

 known in Bengal as "quinetum." The first extraction of an alkaloid 

 was in the case of morphia, from opium, in 1805 ; the discoverer was 

 an apothecary of Hameln, who was rewarded rather better than the 

 celebrated piper of that town, for the French Academy of Sciences 

 voted him two thousand francs. Quinine was discovered in 1820 by 

 the French chemists Pelletier and Caventou. The sciences and arts 

 of botany and practical forestry, of chemistry and practical pharmacy, 

 are now all concerned in the production of this most invaluable of 

 remedies. The commerce of the world has taken cinchona in hand, 

 and there are now plantations of the trees not unworthy to be named 

 beside those of coffee and tea. The value of the crude bark imported 

 into England alone in 1882 was nearly two millions sterling. The 

 original and native cinchona region on the damp eastern slopes of the 

 Andes in Peru is still a source of wealth, and a still greater source of 

 wealth are the new plantations on the Andes in Bolivia. The Indian 

 Government has successfully cultivated the bark on a large scale in 

 the Nilghiri Hills in Madras, and more recently at Darjiling in the 

 Himalayas ; while a crowd of private planters have followed in the 

 same enterprise in Coorg, Travancore, and Ceylon. The Dutch Gov- 

 ernment, who were the pioneers of cinchona cultivation, have found the 

 climate and soil of Java well adapted for the species and varieties of 

 trees most rich in quinine. Jamaica is the latest field to which this 

 new and ever-increasing industry has extended. 



How does quinine control, modify, or cut short an attack of ague ? 

 This is a question with which the commerce of the world can not grap- 

 ple, but only the medical profession ; and the truth requires it to be 

 said, that the medical profession knows little of the modus operandi 

 of quinine in ague. Sydenham, two hundred years ago, laid down the 

 two great rules for the administration of bark : to give it after the 



