The Fever Bark Tree

“A TREE grows which they call ‘the fever tree’ in the country of Loxa (Peru), whose bark . . . made into a powder . . . cures the fevers and tertianas ... it has produced miraculous results in Lima.” With this comment by an Augustinian monk in a religious chronicle, published in Spain in 1639, is launched this narrative of the use of the Peruvian bark for malarial fever. It is a story told with enthusiasm and scholarly fidelity. The cause of the famous bark was well served by a succession of courageous men whose names will be new to the reader. He will be glad to remember them. They are the book.

Cardinal de Lugo, in 1649, with dignity and no thought of personal gain, had the vision to encourage study of the medicinal property of the Peruvian bark. Great quantities of it were sent to him in malaria-ridden Rome. Results were promisingly successful. But prevailing prejudices among physicians and anti-Jesuits were quick to capitalize on the inevitable failures of the remedy, and drove the “Jesuits’ powder” into disfavor and scarcity. A generation later, another strong personality, Sir Robert Talbor, — in his earlier days known as “the Essex quack,” — revived the use of the “Jesuits’ powder” in circumstances that make particularly good reading.

The scene shifts to South America, where a French botanist, de Jussieu, spent years devoted to the arduous quest for and study of the fever bark tree, only to lose his data, specimens, and health. A young Spanish physician, José Mutis, came out to Bogotá in 1761. With great tenacity of purpose, he carried out a careful botanical study of the tree, now classified through his efforts as Cinchona,His Botanical Institute of the New Kingdom of Granada was the first institution for pure scientific research in the Western world. His lifework was crowned by the misfortune that seemed to beset Europeans most interested in the Cinchona trees.

When French chemists in 1820 isolated the anti-malarial aklaloids in the bark, giving to one of them the name quinine, the really decisive step had been taken towards greater use of the bark. Quinine sulfate was soon on the market, a much more reliable medication than the former crude powder made from a variety of barks. The bark highest in quinine content was found to come from Cinchona trees in a remote Andean district in northern Bolivia. There follows the account of the none too admirable penetration of this area by French, Dutch, and British adventurers and promoters, to secure young plants and seeds of various Cinchonas for transfer to Java and India. Perhaps the end will have yet justified the means.

The story proceeds more briefly with the development of the Eastern plantations, the machinations of those who would and did control the production of bark and quinine, and the efforts to produce in India an inexpensive “poor man’s quinine.” The intricacies of the Kina Bureau monopoly (“In matters of commerce, the fault of the Dutch is offering too little, and asking too much”) or the relative merits of atabrine and quinine are not for this story to dwell upon.

“By experience, man finds a short way by a long wandering.” This is primarily the story of his early wanderings in search for knowledge of the Fever Bark Tree.

MYLES P. BAKER