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CHINCHONA OFFICINALIS - A Medicine For Malaria

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Bianca
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« on: July 20, 2009, 08:56:18 am »



                   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.
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Bianca
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« Reply #1 on: July 20, 2009, 09:01:40 am »



CHINCHONA IN BLOOM
« Last Edit: July 20, 2009, 09:19:53 am by Bianca » Report Spam   Logged

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« Reply #2 on: July 20, 2009, 09:03:59 am »











                                                             C I N C H O N A






Scientific classification



Kingdom: Plantae
 
(unranked): Angiosperms
 
(unranked): Eudicots
 
(unranked): Asterids
 
Order: Gentianales
 
Family: Rubiaceae
 
Genus: Cinchona
L. 1753
 
Species
about 25 species; see text
 

Cinchona is a genus of about 25 species in the family Rubiaceae, native to tropical South America.
They are large shrubs or small trees growing to 5-15 metres tall with evergreen foliage.

 
The leaves are opposite, rounded to lanceolate, 10-40 cm long. The flowers are white, pink or red, produced in terminal panicles. The fruit is a small capsule containing numerous seeds.

The name of the genus is due to Carolus "Carl" Linnaeus, who named the tree in 1742 after a Countess of Chinchon, the wife of a viceroy of Peru, who, in 1638, was introduced by natives to the medicinal properties of the bark. Stories of the medicinal properties of this bark, however, are perhaps noted in journals as far back as the 1560s-1570s (see the Ortiz link below).

Cinchona species are used as food plants by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species including The Engrailed, The Commander, and members of the genus Endoclita including E. damor, E. purpurescens
and E. sericeus.
« Last Edit: July 20, 2009, 09:06:33 am by Bianca » Report Spam   Logged

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« Reply #3 on: July 20, 2009, 09:20:25 am »



CHINCHONA FRUIT
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« Reply #4 on: July 20, 2009, 09:21:28 am »











Cinchona alkaloids



The bark of trees in this genus is the source of a variety of alkaloids, the most familiar of which is quinine, an anti-fever agent especially useful in treating malaria.






Cinchona alkaloids include:



cinchonine and cinchonidine (stereoisomers with R = vinyl, R' = hydrogen)

quinine and quinidine (stereoisomers with R = vinyl, R' = methoxy)

dihydroquinidine & dihydroquinine (stereoisomers with R = ethyl, R' = methoxy)



They find use in organic chemistry as organocatalysts in asymmetric synthesis.
« Last Edit: July 20, 2009, 09:23:06 am by Bianca » Report Spam   Logged

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« Reply #5 on: July 20, 2009, 09:26:57 am »










Medicinal use



The medicinally active bark, which is stripped from the tree, dried and powdered, includes other alkaloids that are closely related to quinine but react differently in treating malaria. As a medicinal herb, cinchona bark is also known as 'Jesuit's bark' or 'Peruvian bark'.

The plants are cultivated in their native South America, and also in other tropical regions, notably in India and Java.
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« Reply #6 on: July 20, 2009, 09:27:59 am »



19th CENTURY ILLUSTRATION
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« Reply #7 on: July 20, 2009, 09:32:26 am »









                                J E S U I T ' S   B A R K   also   P E R U V I A N   B A R K






Jesuit's Bark, also called Peruvian Bark, is the historical name of the most celebrated specific remedy
for all forms of malaria.

It is so named because it was obtained from the bark of several species of the genus Cinchona, of the order Rubiaceae, that have been discovered at different times and are indigenous in the Western Andes of South America and were first described and introduced by Jesuit priests who did missionary work in Peru.

Other terms referring to this preparation and its source were "Jesuit's Tree", "Jesuit's Powder" and "Pulvis Patrum".

Formerly, the bark itself, prepared in different forms, was used as a drug, but later in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, natural harvesting of immense quantities formed the base of the production of cinchona alkaloids.

This industry was carried on principally in Germany, and the Dutch and English cinchona plantations in Java, Ceylon and India were the chief sources whence the raw material was supplied.

Its main active principle, quinine, is now chemically synthesized. The term quinine comes from ghina,
or quina-quina, the name given by Peruvian Indians to the bark, meaning medicine of medicines or bark of barks.
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« Reply #8 on: July 20, 2009, 09:35:13 am »



SEBASTIANO BAIO'S BOOK









The history of cinchona bark, which dates back more than 300 years, has greatly influenced that of pharmacy, botany, medicine, trade, theoretical and practical chemistry, and tropical agriculture.

Circa 1650, the physician Sebastiano Bado declared that this bark had proved more precious to mankind than
all the gold and silver that the Spaniards had obtained from South America, and the world confirmed his opinion.

In the 1700s, the Italian professor of medicine Ramazzini said that the introduction of Peruvian bark would be of the same importance to medicine that the discovery of gunpowder was to the art of war, an opinion endorsed by contemporary writers on the history of medicine.

Whoever has searched the annals of cinchona will recognize the truth of the following observations of Weddel (d. 1877): "Few subjects in natural history have excited general interest in a higher degree than cinchona; none perhaps have hitherto merited the attention of a greater number of distinguished men".

Dissension, however, was rife at the time, mainly due to its source of discovery, the Jesuits.

As the great Alexander von Humboldt said, "It almost goes without saying that among Protestant physicians hatred of the Jesuits and religious intolerance lie at the bottom of the long conflict over the good or harm effected by Peruvian Bark".
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« Reply #9 on: July 20, 2009, 09:40:46 am »










The Spanish Jesuit missionaries in Peru were taught the healing power of the bark by natives, between 1620 and 1630, when a Jesuit at Loxa was indebted to its use for his cure from an attack of malaria (Loxa Bark).

It was used at the recommendation of the Jesuits in 1630, when the Countess of Chinchon (Cinchon; the derivative is Cinchona, the appellation selected by Carolus Linnaeus in 1742; Markham preferred Chinchona), wife of the new viceroy, who had just arrived from Europe, was taken ill with malaria at Lima. The countess was saved from death, and in thanksgiving caused large quantities of the bark to be collected. This she distributed to malaria sufferers, partly in person and partly through the Jesuits of St. Paul's College at Lima (pulvis comitissć). She did not return to Europe and was not the first to bring the bark there or to spread its use through Spain and the rest of the continent, as stated by Markham.

For the earliest transportation of the bark we must thank the Jesuit Barnabé de Cobo (1582-1657; the Cobća plant), who rendered important services in the exploration of Mexico and Peru. In his capacity of procurator of the Peruvian province of his order, he brought the bark from Lima to Spain, and afterwards to Rome and other parts of Italy, in 1632.

In the meanwhile its merits must have been ascertained both in Lima and in various parts of Europe, as Count Chinchon and his physician Juan de Vega brought it back with them in 1640.

Count Chinchon, however, troubled himself little about the use or sale of the bark.

A greater distribution resulted from the large quantity brought over by the Jesuit Bartolomé Tafur, who, like Cobo, came to Spain in 1643 while procurator of the Peruvian province of his order, proceeded through France (there is an alleged cure of the young Louis XIV, when still dauphin, effected by Father Tafur by means of Peruvian bark), and thence to Italy as far as Rome.

The celebrated Jesuit theologian John de Lugo, who became a cardinal in 1643, learned about the cinchona from Tafur, and remained from 1643 until his death in 1660 its faithful advocate, zealous defender, and generous, disinterested dispenser in Italy and the rest of Europe, for which he was honoured in the appellation of pulvis cardinalis, pulvis Lugonis, and by having several portraits painted of him.

De Lugo had the bark analysed by the pope's physician in ordinary, Gabriele Fonseca, who reported on it very favourably.

Its distribution among the sick in Rome took place only on the advice and with the consent of the Roman doctors.

The cardinal had more bark brought from America over the trade routes through Spain.

Almost all the other patrons of the drug in those times appear to have been directly influenced by de Lugo; as, for instance, the lay brother Pietro Paolo Pucciarini, S. J. (1600-1661), apothecary in the Jesuit College at Rome, who undoubtedly deserves the greatest credit after de Lugo for distributing the genuine unadulterated article, and to whom are attributed the Roman directions for its use (Schedula Romana), the earliest dating at least from 1651.
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« Reply #10 on: July 20, 2009, 09:43:33 am »











In his friend Honoré Fabri, a French Jesuit, who stayed for a time in Rome, de Lugo won a determined defender of the bark against the first anti­cinchona pamphlet written by the Brussels doctor Jean-Jacques Chifflet.

Under the pseudonym of Antimus Conygius, Fabri wrote in 1655 the first paper on cinchona published in Italy, as well as the first of the long list of brochures defending its use and the only independent article on this bark which has been issued by a Jesuit.

The two Genoese, Girolamo Bardi, a priest, and Sebastiano Baldo, a physician, who were among the pioneer advocates of the plant, were intimate with the cardinal, and Baldo prefixed to his principal work a letter from de Lugo, dated 1659, on cinchona, which shows that the cardinal even when seventy-seven years old was still active in its behalf.

Circumstances created a suitable opportunity for disseminating the bark from Rome throughout Europe by means of the Jesuits.

In 1646, 1650, and 1652 the delegates to the eighth, ninth, and tenth general councils of the order (three from each province) returned to their homes, taking it with them, and at the same time there is evidence of its use in the Jesuit colleges at Genoa, Lyon, Leuven, Ratisbon, etc.

The remedy — connected with the name of Jesuit — very soon reached England.

The English weekly Mercurius Politicus in 1658 contained in four numbers the announcement that: "The excellent powder known by the name of 'Jesuit's powder' may be obtained from several London chemists".

It remains to recall the fact that even in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the bark kept in the Jesuit pharmacies or in their colleges was considered particularly efficacious because they were better able to provide a genuine unadulterated supply.

Further, that in those two centuries Jesuit missionaries took the remedy to the malaria regions of foreign countries, even reaching the courts of Peking in China and Kyoto in Japan, where they cured the emperor by its means; that in Peru during the eighteenth century they urged American collectors to lay out new plantations; and in the nineteenth century they were the first to plant cinchona outside of South America.
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« Reply #11 on: July 20, 2009, 09:46:21 am »










History of cultivation



The bark was very valuable to Europeans in expanding their access to and exploitation of resources in far off colonies, and at home.

Bark gathering was often environmentally destructive, destroying huge expanses of trees for their bark, with difficult conditions for low wages that did not allow the indigenous bark gatherers to settle debts even upon death.

In 1860, a British expedition to South America led by Clements Markham brought back Cinchona seeds and plants, which were planted in the Hakgala Botanical Garden in Sri Lanka in January 1861.

James Taylor, the pioneer of tea planting in Sri Lanka, was one of the pioneers of Cinchona cultivation.

By 1883 about 64,000 acres (260 km2) were in cultivation in Sri Lanka, with exports reaching a peak of 15 million pounds in 1886.

In 1865, the "Carlota Colony" was founded in Mexico.

Wealthy American post-war confederate leaders were enticed there by the Emperor Maximillian, Archduke of Habsburg. The colony was situated on the direct Mexico-Vera Cruz Highway, and within 50 km of the railway, which was due to arrive in Cordoba at the end of that year. ...

"All that survives today of the ill-fated Carlota Colony are the flourishing groves of cinchonas, the quinine-producing tree which ... at [Empress] Charlotte's instigation, [were] first introduced into the country."
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« Reply #12 on: July 20, 2009, 09:48:32 am »









                                                          T R E A T M E N T S



Cinchona has been used for a number of medical reasons such as:



Treats malaria

Kills parasites

Reduces fever

Regulates heartbeat

Calms nerves

Stimulates digestion

Kills germs

Reduces spasms

Kills insects

Relieves pain

Kills bacteria and fungi

Dries secretions



The main reason for its use is to treat malaria, but it is rarely used today as many people think it is dangerous, as it can kill if taken in large amounts.



RETRIEVED FROM

wikipedia.org
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« Reply #13 on: July 22, 2009, 08:57:13 pm »










                                                              Q U I N I N E





Quinine (US: /ˈkwaɪnaɪn/, UK: /kwɪˈniːn, ˈkwɪniːn/) is a natural white crystalline alkaloid having antipyretic (fever-reducing), antimalarial, analgesic (painkilling), and anti-inflammatory properties and a bitter taste. It is a stereoisomer of quinidine.

Quinine was the first effective treatment for malaria caused by Plasmodium falciparum, appearing in therapeutics in the 17th century. It remained the antimalarial drug of choice until the 1940s, when other drugs replaced it. Since then, many effective antimalarials have been introduced, although quinine is still used to treat the disease in certain critical situations. Quinine is available with a prescription in the United States and over-the-counter, in very small quantities, in tonic water. Quinine is also used to treat lupus, nocturnal leg cramps and arthritis, and there have been attempts (with limited success) to treat prion diseases.

Originally discovered by the Quechua Indians of Peru, the bark of the cinchona tree was first brought to Europe by the Jesuits.
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« Reply #14 on: July 22, 2009, 08:59:47 pm »










Quinine is an effective muscle relaxant, long used by the Quechua Indians of Peru to halt shivering due to low temperatures. The Peruvians would mix the ground bark of cinchona trees with sweetened water to offset the bark's bitter taste, thus producing tonic water.

Quinine has been used in un-extracted form by Europeans since at least the early 1600s. Quinine was first used to treat malaria in Rome in 1631. During the 1600s, malaria was endemic to the swamps and marshes surrounding the city of Rome. Malaria was responsible for the death of several popes, many cardinals and countless common Roman citizens. Most of the priests trained in Rome had seen malaria victims and were familiar with the shivering brought on by the cold phase of the disease. The Jesuit brother Agostino Salumbrino (1561-1642), an apothecary by training who lived in Lima, observed the Quechua using the bark of the cinchona tree for that purpose. While its effect in treating malaria (and hence malaria-induced shivering) was unrelated to its effect in controlling shivering from cold, it was still a successful medicine for malaria. At the first opportunity, he sent a small quantity to Rome to test in treating malaria. In the years that followed, cinchona bark was known as Jesuit's bark and became one of the most valuable commodities shipped from Peru to Europe.

The form of quinine most effective in treating malaria was found by Charles Marie de La Condamine in 1737. Quinine was isolated and named in 1817 by French researchers Pierre Joseph Pelletier and Joseph Bienaimé Caventou. The name was derived from the original Quechua (Inca) word for the cinchona tree bark, "quina" or "quina-quina", which roughly means "bark of bark" or "holy bark". Prior to 1820, the bark was first dried, ground to a fine powder and then mixed into a liquid (commonly wine) which was then drunk. Large scale use of quinine as a prophylaxis started around 1850.

Quinine also played a significant role in the colonization of Africa by Europeans. The harbinger of modern pharmacology, quinine was the prime reason Africa ceased to be known as the white man's grave. A historian has stated that "it was quinine's efficacy that gave colonists fresh opportunities to swarm into the Gold Coast, Nigeria and other parts of west Africa".

To maintain their monopoly on cinchona bark, Peru and surrounding countries began outlawing the export of cinchona seeds and saplings beginning in the early 19th century. The Dutch government persisted in their attempts to smuggle the seeds, and by the 1930s Dutch plantations in Java were producing 22 million pounds of cinchona bark, or 97% of the world's quinine production.[1] During World War II, Allied powers were cut off from their supply of quinine when the Germans conquered Holland and the Japanese controlled the Philippines and Indonesia. The United States, however, had managed to obtain four million cinchona seeds from the Philippines and begin operation of cinchona plantations in Costa Rica. It came too late, and an estimated 60,000 US troops in Africa and the South Pacific died due to the lack of quinine.
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