Quinine London. It remained the antimalarial drug of choice until the 1940s, when other drugs took over. The form of quinine most effective in treating malaria was found by Charles Marie de La Condamine in 1737. In 1820, French researchers Pierre Joseph Pelletier and Joseph Bienaimé Caventou first isolated quinine from the bark of a tree in the genus "Cinchona" - probably "Cinchona officinalis" - and subsequently named the substance. The name was derived from the original Quechua (Inca) word for the cinchona tree bark, "quina" or "quina-quina", which means "bark of bark" or "holy bark". Prior to 1820, the bark
Jesuit's bark "Pulvis Patrum". The history of cinchona bark, which dates back more than 300 years, has greatly influenced that of pharmacy, botany, medicine, trade, theoretical and practical chemistry, and tropical agriculture. Circa 1650, the physician Sebastiano Bado declared that this bark had proved more precious to mankind than all the gold and silver that the Spaniards had obtained from South America, and the world confirmed his opinion. See also Swords, Ships and Sugar - The History of Nevis, by Vincent K. Hubbard, p. 73, where a large amount of "Peruvian Bark" had been captured by the pirate Basil Ringrose, also known