Drawing by David Wood,
Genentech Graphics Department
A MEDICINE FOR MALARIA
In the early 1500's, Indian fever bark was one of the first medicinal plants to find appreciative consumers in Europe. Taken from the cinchona tree (Cinchona officinalis), the bark was used as an infusion by native people of the Andes and Amazon highlands to treat fevers. Jesuit missionaries brought the bark back to Europe.
By the early sixteenth century, this medicine was known as "Jesuit fever bark," quite a transformation.
The effectiveness of the bark's active ingredient, the alkaloid quinine, in treating malaria and other fever-inducing diseases made it worth nearly its weight in gold.
Cinchona provides the first case of a medicinal plant that was needed too much and too quickly.
Cinchona bark sewn in leather bundles was shipped in huge quantities from ports in Peru and Ecuador.
As European powers established colonies in Africa and Asia, the demand for cinchona bark only increased to combat the scourge of malaria. For three centuries the global demand for cinchona bark grew constantly, threatening the tree's survival.
In 1923
the standard malaria treatment
in the U.S.A.
An illegal act in the mid-nineteenth century ultimately saved the cinchona.
In 1865, Charles Ledger smuggled a small collection of seedlings from South America.
Since the British had commissioned their own team of smugglers, they declined to purchase Ledger's seedlings. However, the Dutch, eager to develop a supply for their colonies, bought some seeds. Within ten years, cinchona trees grew in Java. By 1930, Java produced more then 95 percent of the world's supply.
The outbreak of World War II cut off the bark supply to all but the Japanese and their allies.
Ironically, Southeast Asian seeds were then returned to Central America to establish plantations.
Today, as a result of widespread drug resistance to some of its synthetic versions, cinchona's active ingredient, quinine, has reemerged as the medicine of choice to fight the most deadly form of malaria, caused by the parasite Plasmodium falciparum.