Page 232 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

quinine 1533

to take their quinine dissolved in water, with gin added, lems encountered with mass chemotherapy, however,
thereby creating the gin and tonic. Some authors have anticipated both the creation of the World Health Orga-
assigned a primary significance to the role of quinine in nization and the later problems of the global HIV
the European conquest of the tropics, but recent schol- pandemic.
arship suggests that a variety of other public health prac- The world’s market supply of quinine during the 1920s
tices, such as mosquito screening and latrine-digging and 1930s came to be controlled by an Amsterdam-based
were at least as important in reducing the rates of sickness cartel known as the Kina Bureau, which succeeded in as-
and death in the tropics. suring a reliable supply of quinine at prices that allowed
Beginning in the early twentieth century, quinine was growers to avoid excessive competition.This system was
employed in mass public health campaigns, known as shattered by the Japanese conquest in 1942 of the Dutch
quininization, designed to reduce drastically the toll of East Indies, where extensive cinchona cultivation was
malaria through universal chemical therapy. This policy practiced. The Japanese captured the cinchona planta-
was first adopted in Italy, with considerable success. But tions that had produced most of the raw material for qui-
the expense of the policy, in combination with the fact nine production.Allied casualties mounted rapidly in the
that quinine could not prevent relapses of all forms of Pacific theatre of the war, and a major scientific research
malaria, led to a return to individual therapy and a focus program was launched in the U.S. to find a synthetic
on environmental interventions to destroy the anopheles substitute.
mosquito, which carries malaria, and its habitat. Since World War II, synthetic antimalarial drugs have
Quinine proved its importance to the military during largely replaced quinine.Today, quinine remains a highly
the early twentieth century. Quinine could be crucial to effective antimalarial drug, and in cases of synthetic drug-
keeping troops fit to fight, and reducing the enemy’s resistant malaria, it is the drug of last resort.
access to the drug could produce military victory. During
James L. A.Webb, Jr.
World War I, the Allied Powers cut off the supply of qui-
nine to the Germans and thereby produced great suffer- See also Malaria
ing along the Eastern Front.The Germans undertook an
emergency scientific research program to find a synthetic
Further Reading
substitute, but did not succeed until the 1920s.
Curtin, P. D. (1998). Disease and empire. New York: Cambridge Uni-
Following World War I, the League of Nations Malaria
versity Press.
Commission attempted to survey the global status of Duran-Reynals, M. L. (1946). The fever bark tree:The pageant of quinine.
malarial infections and to estimate the amount of quinine Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
Harrison, G. (1978). Mosquitoes, malaria, and man. New York: E. P.
that would be necessary to intervene effectively.The esti- Dutton.
mated quantity was in excess of the world’s supply, and Rocco, F. (2003). The miraculous fever tree: Malaria and the quest for a
cure that changed the world. New York: HarperCollins.
the initiative to treat the world’s populations chemother-
Taylor, N. (1945). Cinchona in Java: The story of quinine. New York:
apeutically was dropped.This early survey and the prob- Greenberg.