The leader. [volume] (Brookhaven, Miss.) 1895-1905, 1905-09-23
GREATEST OF DRUGS.
DEATH RATE IN INDIA CUT
DOWN By QUIN1NE.
Fever Preventive Makes Exploration
in Tropical Countries Pos
sible- Makes For
tunes.


Quinine is one of the most valuable
of all the drugs known to medical
science.
No one would venture to travel in
India without it. Before its discovery
100000 people died annually in India
of malarial fever; the mortality from
this cause is now less than half that
number.
The poor people-so poor that they
looked upon the fever as their fate
and expected no reliefar saved by
the agency of quinine. England could
not keep her European soldiers in
India without it.
Livingstone and other travellers in
central Africa could have never made
their discoveries without its aid. 1t is
said of the great German explorer
Schweinfurth that when he lost his
entire property by fire, valuable sci
entitic instruments among the rest, he
felt the loss of his quinine to be the
greatest of all, and often thought with
fear of the journey that lay before
him, which, however, he presevered
in.
The soldiers in the American civil
war depended greatly upon quinine.
The pioneers in this country when it
was first settled and civilized had as
hard work fighting fever aud ague in
the then swampy, malarial. districts
as in fighting Indians, and quinine was
even more necessary than firearms.
The great interoceanic canal now
in progress of construction across the
isthmus of Panama requires the labor
of thousands of men largely unaccus-
toned to the climate and $50 much
more more susceptible to its ill effect.
Before the route was decided upon
many surveys were made and the
men, naval officers and others engaged
in this work, were exposed to all con-
ditions of weather. But through the
UNIVERSE and proper use of the medi-
cine daily as precautionary measure
the mortality was no greater than
among men in like employ in other To-
calities. Out of s little over 5000
white men employed in the construc-
ton of the Panama railroad there
were only 293 deaths, and some of
these were the result of other than
climatic causes.
The whole world is indebted to the
cinchona tree, from which quinine is
made. Who could have foretoId that
this tree, native of mountainous for
ests of South America, would be of
such Importance in the advance of civ
ilization and Christianity.
It's safe transportation from one side
of the world to the other and the Sue
cess attained in converting wild into
cultivated plant and naturalizing it
reads like a romance. One of the
strange things about quinine is that it
is not used as medicine in the prac.
tice of the native physicians of Peru,
Ecuador or Colombia.
The native Indians did not even
know Of its curative property till en-
lightened by the Spaniards about $50
years ago. They called the chinchona
tree kina, from which comes the word
quinine. What do you call it-kwine,
kin-nine, keen-neen or kin-neen? What
u Nv Vi AdACo IlO lug uebo AeAO'
China bark, quina, quinquina, chincho-
ma bark, quinine, cincona, countess
powder, Jesuit's bark, Cardinal De
Lugo's powder, Peruvian bark, etc.
Great fortunes have been made out
of it. At the time when Louis XIV
purchased the secret a pound of the
bark cost about $50. AS it came into
general use it became a most i'm
portant article of export from Peru.
Now it is successfully cultivated in
Ceylon and Java.
AS means of guarding the system
from intermittent fever the English
caval regulations require that every
man should take asportion of the drug
when the ship is within certain dis
lance of the east or west coast of
Africa and that it should be regularly
taken by those engaged in boat
cruising along the coasts or on the
rivers or creeks.
We may say with as much truth now
rs did Lambert in 1920: THE treas
ures which Peru yields and which the
Spaniards sought and dug out of the
bowels of the earth are not to be COM
pared for utility with the bark of the
quinquina tree, which they for long
time ignored
Poisonous Waters.