Word: cinchona
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Included among Chaser’s active ingredients are Cinchona 12x (for throbbing head, noise sensitivity), Nux vom 12x (for light sensitivity), and Quercus gland sp 6x (for dry mouth and throat...
...breakthrough represents a new stage in the ancient battle against malaria and the insect that carries it, the female Anopheles mosquito. Peruvian Indians discovered the first important weapon: the bark of the Cinchona tree. For centuries the bark and its derivative, quinine, were the only means of preventing and treating malaria's waves of fever, which can recur erratically and weaken victims for years. Gin and tonic, originally made with quinine, is said to have been developed by British colonialists as a way of making their daily doses more palatable...
...colonies in 1721 to prevent serious cases of smallpox-condemned the use by Boston physicians of "Leaden Bullets," to be swallowed for "that miserable Distemper which they called the Twisting of the Guts." By the early 18th century, there were only two drugs known to be specific: cinchona bark for malaria, and mercury as an antisyphilitic agent. Dr. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia (one of four physicians to sign the Declaration of Independence) used bloodletting so extensively that even his colleagues marveled at the survival of his patients. Thomas Jefferson said in 1807, "The patient ... sometimes gets well in spite...
That complacency proved costly. The spraying slowdown allowed the mosquitoes to thrive and multiply again. Quinine, used to treat malaria, is in short supply in some areas; India has not encouraged cultivation of the Cinchona trees from whose bark the drug is obtained (the malaria parasite is showing a rising resistance to the drug chloroquine, a synthetic substitute for quinine). Furthermore, rising petroleum prices have sent the costs of insecticides soaring, placing another burden on the shaky economics of the region. DDT, which cost India about $500 per ton in 1974, now costs...
...narrative pace is numbing, its style is deafening, its language penny dreadful. All the characters whirl like dervishes, especially Dirk Struan, a kind of Scottish superman who can borrow $5,000,000 in silver ingots from an Oriental tycoon, invent binoculars, and corner the world supply of cinchona bark, all without breathing very hard. Well, almost. His Scots accent wavers a bit under stress: "Damned if he'll get away with it, Will! He'll no get awa' with...