xxiv Annual Address. [February, 1916. 



propose to review it further in my address to-night, but instead 

 to deal with a subject which I do not think is receiving the 

 attention it deserves at the present time, in the hope of stirring 

 up renewed interest in it. I refer to the investigation of indt 

 genous drugs, about which much has been said and written in 

 recent years, but remarkably little accomplished. I shall first 

 bring before you some examples of valuable work which has 

 been done in India in the past in order to show the immense 

 value of successful investigations of this branch of medical 

 science, and then indicate the lines on which further similar 

 results may be expected to be obtained, and point out what is 

 necessary in order to allow of their being attained. 



I will first deal with a very old and long-forgotten episode, 

 which I came across when reading early works on medicine by 

 Anglo-Indian writers (original and not the present incorrect 

 official sense of the word) when preparing the historical section 

 of my book on Fevers in the Tropics. It is one which has left 

 its mark even on present-day practice in the rooted objection 

 of Indian patients to take Quinine daring a rise of temperature , 

 which I was never able to understand until I studied the old medi- 

 cal literature. As many of you probably know, cinchona bark, 

 from which the alkaloid quinine is prepared, was first imported 

 into Europe from Peru as far back as 1632 by the Spaniards 

 and was long known as Jesuits' bark, while as early as 1657 a 

 Dr. Bogue used it with success in the fatal fevers of the rainy 

 season in Calcutta. In 1765 James Lind treated some 500 

 cases of fever in Lower Bengal with large doses of cinchona 

 bark with only two deaths, giving the drug during the slightest 

 remission of the fever, while John Clark in 1768 treated a 

 malignant malarial fever epidemic in Bengal with as large doses 

 as the patient's stomach would stand without paying any 



REGARD TO THE REMISSIONS OR EXACERBATION OF THE 

 FEVER. 



In September 1804 a Dr. James Johnson arrived in the 

 Hoogly and as the result of the loss of a single case of malaria 

 treated with cinchona without the precautions recommended 

 by his predecessors condemned it as useless and, discarding the 

 experience of a century and a half, he introduced copious bleed- 

 ings and salivation with mercury. On his return to London 

 after a very brief visit to the East he wrote a book on tropical 

 diseases and edited a review, by means of which it is recorded 

 tha,t "all opposition was silenced and swamped by his slaugh- 

 tering and withering criticisms and thus was accomplished a 

 most wonderful revolution in the treatment of tropical fevers.'' 

 In 1816 a Dr. Halliday drew attention to the very high mortality 

 attending this spoliative treatment, and recorded that as 

 much as 800 to 900 grains of calomel were given in a single 

 attack of fever and that in a single month 13,337 grains f 

 calomel were given in the General Hospital, Calcutta. His 



