History of pharmacy in the United States of its discoverer, which became the first effective treatment for malaria. The active ingredient of this cinchona bark, quinine, was the primary treatment for malaria well into the 1940s. "About 170 drugs used by the Indians of British North America, and perhaps 50 used by the indigenous people of the Caribbean, Mexico, Central and South America" became important enough in the U.S. (as the practitioners of chemistry and pharmacy eventually catalogued, analyzed and understood them) to merit listing in the United States Pharmacopoeia (est. 1820) or the National Formulary. In the early 1700s, James Oglethorpe, founder of the Georgia colony,
Cinchona people. Italian sources spelt Quina as Cina which was a source of confusion with "Smilax" from China. Haggis argued that Qina and Jesuit's bark actually referred to "Myroxylon peruiferum" or Peruvian balsam and that this was an item of importance in Spanish trade in the 1500s. Over time, the bark of the "Myroxylon" was adulterated with the similar looking bark of what we now know as "Cinchona". Gradually the adulterant became the main product that was the key therapeutic ingredient used in malarial therapy. The bark was included as "Cortex Peruanus" in the London Pharmacopoeia in 1677. The "fever tree"