The devastating effects of malaria in ancient and mediaeval times
cannot be overstated. The disease killed millions and stunted the
growth of entire civilizations. Indeed, many historians have
suggested that malaria led indirectly to the fall of ancient Greece
and the Roman empire. It is known that Alexander the Great fell
victim to the disease, and that the 'remedy' of bloodletting killed
untold numbers who may otherwise have survived. Against this
background of a ravaging plague, anyone coming up with a cure
should have been hailed as a saviour. But it didn't happen that
way. Indeed, when quinine - the antidote to malaria - was first
introduced, it provoked violent demonstrations of opposition. Many
in Europe, including the leading medics, believed it to be a Papist
poison designed to rid the world of Protestants. Such was the
mindset of the time that it was not until quinine cured Charles II
of malaria in 1678 that the lifesaver became accepted for what it
was. Fiammetta Rocco, literary editor of The Economist and herself
a malaria sufferer, writes an engrossing narrative of how the
commercial battle for possession of quinine - then known as
Peruvian bark or Jesuit's powder - turned into a stampede and,
incidentally, encouraged Western imperial adventures in the
tropics. Much of Rocco's information comes from centuries-old
documents whose value has not been previously recognized. In the El
Libro de Viaticos y Amacen inventories, for instance, she
discovered telling information recorded by early 17th-century
Jesuits that reveals much about the pharmaceuticals of that time.
Rocco's story starts and ends in Africa, while taking readers along
the way to Rome, South America, England, India and Italy. She has
created a fascinating and highly readable study. (Kirkus UK)
A rich and wonderful history of quinine - the cure for malaria. In
the summer of 1623, ten cardinals and hundreds of their attendants,
engaged in electing a new Pope, died from the 'mal'aria' or 'bad
air' of the Roman marshes. Their choice, Pope Urban VIII,
determined that a cure should be found for the fever that was the
scourge of the Mediterranean, northern Europe and America, and in
1631 a young Jesuit apothecarist in Peru sent to the Old World a
cure that had been found in the New - where the disease was
unknown. The cure was quinine, an alkaloid made of the bitter red
bark of the cinchona tree, which grows in the Andes. Both disease
and cure have an extraordinary history. Malaria badly weakened the
Roman Empire. It killed thousands of British troops fighting
Napoleon during the Walcheren raid on Holland in 1809 and many
soldiers on both sides of the American Civil War. It turned back
many of the travellers who explored west Africa and brought the
building of the Panama Canal to a standstill. When, after a
thousand years, a cure was finally found, Europe's Protestants,
among them Oliver Cromwell, who suffered badly from malaria, feared
it was nothing more than a Popish poison. More than any previous
medicine, though, quinine forced physicians to change their ideas
about treating illness. Before long, it would change the face of
Western medicine. Using fresh research from the Vatican and the
Indian Archives in Seville, as well as hitherto undiscovered
documents in Peru, Fiammetta Rocco describes the ravages of the
disease, the quest of the three Englishmen who smuggled cinchona
seeds out of South America, the way quinine opened the door to
Western imperial adventure in Asia, Africa and beyond, and why,
even today, quinine grown in the eastern Congo still saves so many
people suffering from malaria.
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