XX 



Obituary Notices of Fellows deceased. 



Difficulties clue to natural causes at first impeded King's substitution of 

 the cultivation of yellow, or quinine-yielding, cinchonas for that of red 

 cinchonas, in which the proportion of quinine is low. But for the skilful 

 co-operation of Gammie these difficulties must have proved insurmountable, 

 though, great as they were, they proved trifling as compared with other 

 difficulties which only the confidence that he inspired in his immediate 

 superiors enabled King to defeat. From the same source came difficulties 

 connected with manufacture. When Wood resigned the quinologist's post 

 in 1879, King had been deputed to Java to study the working of the Dutch 

 cinchona department in that island. When he returned to India, on 

 December 5, 1879, King found himself appointed to act as his own 

 quinologist. The situation, for one whose passion was for thorough work 

 and yet who was not himself an expert chemist, was full of difficulty ; but 

 the situation had to be faced, and he faced it with courage. Wood, after his 

 return to England, took the keenest interest in the work, striving in his own 

 laboratory to master some economical mode of obtaining quinine, while 

 Gammie made trial of his suggestions on a commercial scale in the factory 

 in Sikkim. Eventually King himself conduced to the ultimate success. 

 He spent the summer of 1884 on furlough in Europe. Botanical studies on 

 which he was engaged necessitated a visit to the Dutch herbaria. While in 

 Holland he acquired some valuable information as to a process for separating 

 quinine, which he at once made known to Wood, who was thereby led to 

 devise a process more hopeful than any previous one. Gammie was able to 

 visit England on furlough in 1885 ; he studied the details of the new process 

 in Wood's laboratory, and on his return to India found that it was practicable 

 on a commercial scale. The separation of pure quinine on the spot without 

 involving financial loss to Government was at last possible, and by the 

 end of 1887 a factory had been established and the manufacture of quinine 

 on commercial lines was in .full operation. In reporting this event, King 

 was content to recount " the generous way in which Mr. Wood, without any 

 pecuniary reward, initiated and invented it [the process] in his private 

 laboratory, while Mr. Gammie perfected it in the Government factory. 

 Without Mr. Wood the process would not have been invented, while without 

 Mr. Gammie it would not have been successfully applied to manufacture." 



The achievement was, after all, only a step towards the realisation of the 

 original design of Government to supply the people of India, on a self- 

 supporting basis, with quinine at a nominal cost. The attempt to supply the 

 article on an eleemosynary basis had, indeed, already been made, police 

 outposts being utilised as the distributing agency. But this humane effort 

 was promptly defeated by small capitalists, who bought up the whole supplies 

 as soon as these reached the various outposts, in order to resell the drug at a. 

 handsome profit and yet at rates which undersold the regular vendor. A 

 firm of European merchants, inspired partly by genuine philanthropy, partly 

 by a legitimate desire to extend their business, had also essayed the task, but 

 had been compelled to abandon it, owing to the impossibility of organising a 



