Cinchona ledgeriana" had a yield of 8 to 13 percent quinine in bark grown in Dutch Indonesia which effectively out-competed the British Indian production. It was only later that the English saw the value and sought to obtain the seeds of "C. ledgeriana" from the Dutch. During World War II, the Japanese conquered Java and the United States lost access to the cinchona plantations that supplied war-critical quinine medication. Botanical expeditions – called Cinchona Missions – were launched in 1942-1944 to explore promising areas of South America in an effort to locate cinchona species that contained quinine and could be harvested
Therapeutice Specialis ad Febres Periodicas Perniciosas who first systematically studied the effect of cinchona in the treatment of malaria, wrote a book which he titled "Therapeutice Specialis ad Febres Periodicas Perniciosas". One highlight of the "Therapeutice Specialis" is the drawing "tree of fevers", where different fevers, such as branches of the tree, are divided into categories: on the left, those that respond to cinchona, are shown as branches covered with bark, while on the right are those for which cinchona is ineffective, and are depicted as denuded leafless branches. Torti clearly identified cinchona as a specific therapy for intermittent fevers, as opposed to continued fevers, which