THE PLANT AS HEALER 147 
The subsequent depredation of the South American. 
forests necessitated the cultivation of cinchona, which 
was ultimately established, with some difficulty, in India 
and Ceylon. Its introduction in the latter place proved 
an immense boon to planters ruined by the spread of 
coffee disease, but over-production has reduced the 
price to such a point that it can scarcely now be grown 
at a profit in Ceylon.. The more scientific methods of 
the Dutch have, moreover, given Java a practical 
monopoly. 
The pharmacists of the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries were very naturally constantly attempting to 
extract the “‘ quintessences’’” of the medicinal plants, 
but it was not until the early part of the nineteenth 
century that much progress was made. 
In 1816 Serturner isolated an alkaline base morphium, 
“a remarkable substance, which shows much analogy 
with ammonia.” Vaquelin had already in 1812 extrac- 
tracted daphnine. In 1820 Pelletier and Caventou 
cleared up the question of quinine, and in 1821 Robiquet, 
while looking for quinine in coffee, discovered caffeine. 
The isolation of strychnine, codeine, emetin and 
atropine soon followed. 
The synthesis of urea in 1828 and the consequent 
breakdown of the artificial line between inorganic and 
organic compounds, together with the isolation of 
aniline from indigo, on the one hand, by a pharmacist 
in 1826, and from coal tar, on the other, in 1834, led 
to the synthesis of certain of the alkaloids, beginning in 
the eighties with conine (active principle of hemlock) 
by Madenberg. They constitute, from a chemical 
point of view, a patallel series to the aniline dyes built 
