514 
CINCHONA CULTIVATION IN JAMAICA. 
some of our mountain districts, between 4500 to 5000 feet above the sea, where in one 
of the wood-covered valleys or ravines, watered at the base by tributary brooks or streams, 
an eligible clearance might be allotted for their future home. To preclude erroneous as¬ 
sumptions, it cannot be too strictly maintained in view, that the preceding investigations 
were merely of a provisional character, and instituted solely as a test to determine whether 
the island of Jamaica could not furnish indigenous cinchonoid remedies independently of 
those imported from foreign sources. These experiments again inculcate an encouraging 
prospect, that by the judicious cultivation of these products, a much greater elaboration 
of their alkaloid constituents may be educed than those furnished by the same trees in 
their primitive condition—a conclusion partially confirmed by the results of practical in¬ 
quiries on the plants acclimated in India. 
We now arrive at that portion of our subject more exclusively referring to the thera¬ 
peutical value of the cinchona alkaloids, and, as a necessary sequence, the selection of 
those species of trees as may be considered more worthy of cultivation than others ; 
points involving considerations of paramount importance. The investigation may be 
restricted to the two primary elements, quinine and cinchonine, respecting the medicinal 
powers of which some difference of opinion prevails among medical authorities. The in¬ 
feriority of the latter salt, appreciated in the most favourable light, has been acknow¬ 
ledged to be one-third less in febrifugal virtue than the former. It will, nevertheless, 
cure the milder forms of intermittent and other ephemeral fevers dependent on various 
causes than a vitiated state of the blood, and also those febrile affections in which stimu¬ 
lant tonics are indicated; but when it is proposed to recommend it as an ordinary sub¬ 
stitute for quinine, the question assumes a graver aspect. In a previous communication* 
to an able pharmacologist. Professor Bentley, of King’s College and Pharmaceutical 
Society, London, Dr. Daniell stated the employment of this alkaloid in lieu of quinine 
at Sierra Leone had induced great vertigo and cerebral congestion to that extent as to 
compel him to discontinue its use; and we are led to understand, from further inquiries 
now in progress, he has found no reason to change or modify his former experience. In 
estimating the relative efficiency of these salts, he points out that two distinctive pecu¬ 
liarities must be specially retained in view, viz. the physiological or toxic power and the 
therapeutic or curative influence, between the effects of which on the human system a 
singular disproportion exists. Although more variable and uncertain in its action, the 
toxic or the stimulant properties of cinchonine are almost identical in effect with those 
of quinine; but beyond this the analogy ceases, for the results of experimental trials in 
West Africa and Jamaica indicate their remedial or curative influence to be, by com¬ 
parison, as 2 to 5, while the reports of the French army surgeons on the same alkaloid 
are reduced so low as 3 to 10; that is, three times the quantity of the former is requisite 
to render it equal in efficiency to the latter salt. The Council of Health of the French 
Army had also, several years since, strongly insisted on the fact of the remarkable con¬ 
trast maintained between the toxical energy of cinchonine and its therapeutic insuffi¬ 
ciency. Now in the more intense or ataxic forms of tropical fevers, in which an ac¬ 
celerated pulse is associated with cerebral disturbance, whether proceeding from local 
congestion, circulation of poisoned blood through the brain, or gastric derangement, 
cinchonine, by its marked influence on the nervous centres, would both increase the 
heart’s action and promote the retrograde metamorphosis of tissue without affording the 
means of elimination, and thus, by retention of these morbific elements, tend to produce an 
unfavourable issue. Again, in those depraved types of yellow fever, before morbid dis¬ 
integration of- the blood has permanently set in, or passive venous accumulations per¬ 
meated the tissues, it is well known the critical stage comprehends but a brief interval 
for the sufferer to call in the aid of science to determine his fate, unless a decided im¬ 
pression be made at once on the constitution by febrifuge medicines, the symptoms 
insidiously progress, but are no longer those of vitality, they have imperceptibly assumed 
the more certain warnings of an approaching dissolution. These illustrations may be 
adduced, among others, to which the previous remarks are equally applicable. It is 
the toxic adjunct, so predominant in cinchonine, that often neutralizes the therapeutic 
effects of quinine, limits and impairs its utility, and induces constitutional irritation and 
excitement to that degree, as to contra-indicate its administration in many acute febrile 
maladies. 
* Pharm. Journ., 2nd >Ser. vol. iv. p. 512. 
