Peruvian Bark

Abstract: On of the most compelling sagas in the history of medicine and therapeutics is the emergence of the Peruvian bark (Cinchona) and also of the pharmacologically active substance derived from it, quinine. Its discovery involved exploration, exploitation and secrecy, and it came, in the nineteenth century, to reflect the struggles of the major European powers for domination, territory and profit. This short history shows how the use of Cinchona enabled the exploration of dangerous malarial areas and in this way facilitated imperial expansion by the Western powers.

Abstract: The history of the introduction of exotic therapeutic drugs in early modern Europe is usually rife with legend and obscurity and Peruvian bark is a case in point. The famous antimalarial drug entered the European medical market around 1640, yet it took decades before the bark was firmly established in pharmaceutical practice. This article argues that the history of Peruvian bark can only be understood as the interplay of its trajectories in science, commerce, and society. Modern research has mostly focused on the first of these, largely due to the abundance of medico-historical data. While appreciating these findings, this article proposes to integrate the medical trajectory in a richer narrative, by drawing particular attention to the acculturation of the bark in commerce and society. Although the evidence we have for these two trajectories is still sketchy and disproportionate, it can nevertheless help us to make sense of sources that have not yet been an obvious focus of research. Starting from an apparently isolated occurrence of the drug in a letter, this article focuses on Paris as the location where medical and public appreciation of the bark took shape, by exploring several contexts of knowledge circulation and medical practice there. These contexts provide a new window on the early circulation of knowledge of the bark, at a time when its eventual acceptance was by no means certain.

Abstract: Abstract“THE enterprise undertaken by me in 1859 of introducing the cultivation of Peruvian bark trees into British India and Ceylon is now an assured success.” With these words Mr. Markham begins his preface, and a perusal of the convenient history he has put together of the gradual steps by which during the past twenty years this success has been reached, enables us to fully share the satisfaction with which they must have been written. Not merely has a cheap supply of febrifuge alkaloids been brought within reach of the fever-haunted population of India, but a new and highly-profitable industry has been opened to the planters of our tropical colonies, and the yield of an inestimable drug placed beyond risk of exhaustion.Peruvian Bark: a Popular Account of the Introduction of Chinchona Cultivation into British India.By Clements R. Markham. 1860–1880. (London: John Murray, 1880.)

Abstract: From the late seventeenth century onwards, in vitro and animal experimentation, chemical tests and microscopical observation, and the analysis of single case histories were used to understand the pharmacology and therapeutic properties of the Peruvian bark. Four examples illustrate how “clinical experiments” with the bark were made during the last third of the eighteenth century: in a hospital, the army, the navy, and finally in private practice.