DRUGS. 65 



medicine during the past year has served to establish a large 

 amount of confidence in it. Complaints of its nauseating 

 are now rarely heard, and many medical practitioners of 

 experience affirm that instead of being less potent in the 

 cure of fever than quinine, the cinchona febrifuge is quite 

 equal, if not superior, to the more expensiv drug. The 

 proper dose of the febrifuge is, moreover, found to be about 

 the same as, or even less than, the dose of quinine. 



"Quinine during the year 1877-78 was very high in price, 

 and in Calcutta it, for some time, stood at 20 rupees per 

 ounce, a sum for which 16 ounces of the febrifuge were 

 always obtainable. The saving to Government by the sub- 

 stitution of cinchona febrifuge for quinine in their hospitals 

 and dispensaries has already been considerable ; I calculate 

 that, at a moderate estimate, it amounts to over three lakhs 

 of rupees (30,000 sterling)." 



Again in 1881 Dr. King reports that in the previous year 

 5,500 pounds of the febrifuge were used in the Government 

 hospitals and dispensaries, in substitution of quinine and 

 shows by a statement of figures that there was effected, up 

 to that period, a clear saving to the Government of sixteen 

 and a quarter lakhs of rupees. 



This saving alone would have sufficiently justified the 

 action of the Government in introducing the plants into 

 India, but the more important one of cheapening an indis- 

 pensable medicine, and bringing it within the reach of all, 

 must always be borne in mind as the grand result of the 

 cinchona extension. 



Up to this period the plants that had been introduced 

 into India and the colonies were mostly the pale cinchona or 

 crown bark (Cinchona qfficinalis), the red bark (Cinchona 

 succirubra), and the yellow bark (Cinchona Calisayti). In 

 the " Kew Report for 1878," however, the history is given 

 of the introduction of the Columbian barks into India, which 

 is a matter cf so much interest that we are compelled to 

 F 



