20 NO SUBSTITUTE FOE QUININE. Chap. I. 



Baikie, in liis voyage up the Niger, attributed the return of 

 his men alive to the habitual use of quinine ; and the number 

 of men whose lives it has saved in our naval service and in 

 India will give a notion of the vast importance of a sufficient 

 and cheap supply of the precious bark which yields it. India 

 and other countries have been vainly searched for a substitute 

 for quinine, and we may say with as much truth now as 

 Laubert did in 1820 — " This medicine, the most precious of 

 all those known in the art of healing, is one of the greatest 

 conquests made by man over the vegetable kmgdom. The 

 treasures which Peru yields, and which the Spaniards sought 

 and dug out of the bowels of the earth, are not to be com- 

 pared for utility with the bark of the quinquina-tree, which 

 they for a long time ignored.'^ 



* Dictionnaire des Sciences Me'dicales, quoted by Delondi-e, p. 7. 



i 



