Quinine side effects include deafness, low blood platelets, and an irregular heartbeat. Use can make one more prone to sunburn. While it is unclear if use during pregnancy causes harm to the baby, use to treat malaria during pregnancy is still recommended. Quinine is an alkaloid, a naturally occurring chemical compound. How it works as a medicine is not entirely clear. Quinine was first isolated in 1820 from the bark of a cinchona tree. Bark extracts have been used to treat malaria since at least 1632. It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines, the most effective and
Cinchona prefer the pronunciation for the common name of the plant. The national tree of Peru is in the genus "Cinchona". "Cinchona" plants belong to the family Rubiaceae and are large shrubs or small trees with evergreen foliage, growing in height. The leaves are opposite, rounded to lanceolate and 10–40 cm long. The flowers are white, pink or red, produced in terminal panicles. The fruit is a small capsule containing numerous seeds. A key character of the genus is that the flowers have marginally hairy corolla lobes. The tribe Cinchoneae includes other genera "Cinchonopsis", "Jossia", "Ladenbergia", "Remijia", "Stilpnophyllum", and "Ciliosemina". In