Synopses & Reviews
"Cinchona revolutionized the art of medicine as profoundly as gunpowder had the art of war." -- Bernardino Ramazzini, Physician to the Duke of Modena, Opera omnia, medica, et physica, 1716
In the summer of 1623, ten cardinals and hundreds of their attendants died in Rome while electing a new pope. The Roman marsh fever that felled them was the scourge of the Mediterranean, northern Europe and even America.
Malaria, now known as a disease of the tropics, badly weakened the Roman Empire. It killed thousands of British troops fighting Napoleon in 1809 and many soldiers on both sides of the American Civil War. It turned back travelers exploring West Africa in the nineteenth century and brought the building of the Panama Canal to a standstill. Even today, malaria kills someone every thirty seconds. For more than one thousand years, there was no cure for it.
Pope Urban VIII, elected during the malarial summer of 1623, was determined that a cure should be found. He encouraged Jesuit priests establishing new missions in Asia and in South America to learn everything they could from the peoples they encountered. In Peru a young apothecarist named Agostino Salumbrino established an extensive network of pharmacies that kept the Jesuit missions in South America and Europe supplied with medicines. In 1631 Salumbrino dispatched a new miracle to Rome.
The cure was quinine, an alkaloid made of the bitter red bark of the cinchona tree. Europe's Protestants, among them Oliver Cromwell, who suffered badly from malaria, feared that the new cure was nothing but a Popish poison. More than any previous medicine, though, quinine forced physicians to change their ideas about illness. Before long, it would change the face of Western medicine.
Yet how was it that priests in the early seventeenth century-who did not know what malaria was or how it was transmitted-discovered that the bark of a tree that grew in the foothills of the Andes could cure a disease that occurred only on the other side of the ocean?
Using fresh research from the Vatican and the Indian archives in Seville, as well as documents she discovered in Peru, award-winning author Fiammetta Rocco chronicles the ravages of the disease; the quest of the three Englishmen who smuggled cinchona seeds out of South America; the way in which quinine opened the door to Western imperial adventure in Asia, Africa and beyond; and how, even today, quinine grown in the eastern Congo still saves the lives of so many suffering from malaria.
Review
"[E]ngaging....[I]nteresting and immediate...[Rocco] stirs in enough science to explain the how malaria and its cure actually work, making this a good choice for fans of memoir and science history." Publishers Weekly
Review
"A seasoned, filigreed history of malaria and its treatment....Snappy and sharp, picaresque but scholarly: it's almost a crime that so heinous a disease should be treated to so grand a biography." Kirkus Reviews
Synopsis
The fascinating story of the intensive search to discover and possess quinine--the only known cure for malaria
Malaria kills someone every 12 minutes in Africa. Now known mostly as a disease of the tropics, malaria led to the demise of the Roman Empire 2,000 years ago and ravaged Europe for years afterwards. At the start of the 17th century, Jesuit priests developed quinine, an alkaloid made out of the bitter red bark of the cinchona tree from the Andes. When quinine arrived in Europe, the Protestant powers resisted the medicine fearing that it was a Popish poison. Quinine's reputation improved, however, when King Charles II was cured of malaria through its offices. Through the centuries, wars were fought to control the supply-through the building of the Panama Canal and into WWII--until Americans synthesized quinine for the first time in 1944.
Rocco describes the ravages of the disease, the search for a cure, and the quest to steal and smuggle cinchona seeds out of South America. The Miraculous Fever Tree deftly illuminates the religious and scientific rivalries, intrepid exploration and colonization evinced by the search for quinine.
Synopsis
Now known as a disease of the tropics, malaria also 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. Even today, malaria kills someone every twelve seconds.
Following a calamitous outbreak of malaria in Rome, 17th century Catholic missionaries set out to travel the world in search of a cure. In Quinine, author Fiammetta Rocco has created a fascinating tale that is part history and part scientific detective story. Rocco illustrates the devastating nature of malaria and the many changes brought about by the introduction of quinine, a cure that is still in use today.
Fiammetta Rocco and her family moved to Kenya in 1929, where she, her father and her grandfather all suffered from malaria. Ms. Rocco is an investigative journalist who has won a number of awards in the United States and Britain. She lives in London, where she is a literary editor at the Economist. This is her first book.
"An engrossing story ... written with immense verve and confidence, in a prose that succeeds in being both crisp and fluent ... a gripping and highly readable tale." -- New York Times Book Review
About the Author
Fiammetta Rocco was raised in Kenya. Her grandfather, her father and she herself all suffered from malaria. Ms. Rocco's investigative journalism has won a number of awards in the United States and in Britain. She lives in London, where she is the literary editor of the Economist. This is her first book.
Table of Contents
Ch. 1. Sickness prevails - Africa -- Ch. 2. The tree required - Rome -- Ch. 3. The tree discovered - Peru -- Ch. 4. The quarrel - England -- Ch. 5. The quest - South America -- Ch. 6. To war and to explore - from Holland to West Africa -- Ch. 7. To explore and to war - From America to Panama -- Ch. 8. The seed - South America -- Ch. 9. The science - India, England and Italy -- Ch. 10. The last forest - Congo.