William Payton, aged 11 ,South Carolina for his question:
Who discovered how to make quinine?
The Countess Chincon was sick of a fever. From time to time it abated. Then, for no known reason, the poor lady was sick again. Her body was wracked by turns with shivering cold and raging fever, The Countess had fallen prey to an illness that attacked many Europeans who braved life in the tropics. She had malaria. And no, one knew then, in the seventeenth century, that she had got the sickness from a mosquito bite.
The husband of the Countess, Count Chincon, was the Spanish Viceroy in Peru, Naturally, everything was done to help the wife of such an Important personage. All remedies were tried. In 1640, the Spanish in South America had discovered a bitter brew from a certain tree. The medicine was called quechua ~‑ pronounced ketchwa. is not likely that the Spanish were the first to discover this medicine. It is possible that the Quechua Indians had been using it for years,
At any rate, medicine made from the bark of this certain tree was given to the ailing Countess. She recovered, News of her recovery spread throughout the world. Anew medicine to cure malaria fevers had been discovered. The tree, a native of Brazil, was named cinchona in honor of the Count and his lucky Countess.
The cinchona tree is a large one. It has foliage rather like the leaves of an ash tree, It wears spiked clusters of blossoms, each little flower five‑pointed like a star. The demand for the new medicine grew throughout Europe and wherever white men suffered from the fevers of malaria. The cinchona trees of Brazil were stripped of their bark. The powdered bark was shipped around the world.
Soon the precious cinchona trees became scarce. For no one thought of planting new ones. The Dutch, however, were smart. They took roots and cuttings of cinchona trees to their territories in the East Indies. The precious trees flourished in the friendly climate. By World War II, most of worlds supply of quinine was coming from Jayd.
In 1942, another blow was struck at the sufferers of malaria. Japan took Java and the cinchona plantations of the East Indies. The supply of quinine was lost, at least to the allies. It was now up to the chemists to copy the magic drag. Of coarse they did it. They did it in less than two years of work and research.
In 1944, the chemists of Harvard University announced that t‑hey could put‑together the magic alkaloid molecules that make quinine. The raw materials they used Good old cheap, reliable coal tar. This wonderful raw material is the by‑product of coal from which hundreds of vital substances have been made.