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
Tree from the cinchona tree ("Cinchona") and was for a long time the remedy of choice for the treatment of malaria. Aspirin was synthesised to replace the sodium salicylate derived from the bark of willow trees ("Salix") which had unpleasant side effects. The anti-cancer drug Paclitaxel is derived from taxol, a substance found in the bark of the Pacific yew ("Taxus brevifolia"). Other tree based drugs come from the paw-paw ("Carica papaya"), the cassia ("Cassia spp."), the cocoa tree ("Theobroma cacao"), the tree of life ("Camptotheca acuminata") and the downy birch ("Betula pubescens"). The papery bark of the white birch tree