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Show IS0NIYERSAL DRUG . ' 4 VIRTUES OF QUININE KNOWN TO ALL PEOPLES. ' Many Stories Told of It Introduction to the World of Medicine, tut Its Value I b Beyond Dispute It la, to be assumed that everyone In ,the civilised world has taken a dote of quinine at some time or other. It la the universal drug. Ita Value Is appreciated by the masses, who use it only for colds and fevers. As a tonic It Is unsurpassed. As' an alterative alter-ative It has no equal In materia mod-lea. mod-lea. A distinguished surgeon has said: "If I wanted to ferment a barrel of cabbage In less time than anyone else could, I would put In it an eighth t)f an dunce of quinine. A little quinine In disordered stomachs acts' Just about as It would In the cabbage. cab-bage. It -hastens the- assimilation ot the food and restores normal conditions." condi-tions." " . ' The habitual user ot quinine, however, how-ever, becomes a slave to the drug, and' thus derives little benefit from It Men with '.malaria eat It by the ounce, and still retain 'the malaria. The world Is full of quinine fiends, who pour a spoonful Into the palm ol one hand and lick it down without a grimace: Tboy are known to chew cinchona hark as. If It were gum. Others not habituated must take two grains or ten In a gelatin capsulo. Before cap-suits cap-suits were Invented It was taken In molasses und tho chances are v that the molasses effected the cure. " Too much quintno is almost as bad as too much calomel. The world is Indebted to Louis XIV. for the general introduction ot quinine. In Franco and Italy physicians who prescribed its uso were persecuted. Protestants altogether repudiated It Robert Talbot, an Englishman, cured his dauphin with It, and Louis Le Orund was Induced to buy the secrot Ho was the only king that ever era-barked era-barked In tho drug business. There are several pretty romances conneotod with tbo discovery ol "klna," as the native Indians ot Peru called the cinchona trees, from which quinine Is derived. Tho drug has had a lot of names quinine, cinchona, countess' powder, Jesuit's bark, Car dinal De Lugo's powder, Peruvian bark, China bark, qulna, qulquina, cinchona cin-chona bark, I etc., and the pronunciation pronuncia-tion of the word "quinine" appears ,to be a matter of geography kwi-nlne, kwe-neen, kin-nine, koen-neen, or .kin-neon .kin-neon take your choice. Tho discovery ot cinchona bark is enveloped In mystery. The wife of tho Spanish viceroy of Peru was Countess Chlnchon. Sho was cured ol an Intermittent fever by drinking an infusion of the bark, Introduced It in Madrid, and bestowed her namo upon It chincona. We have corrupted this into cinchona. That's ono story. Another An-other is that, tho Jesuit missionaries, who were accustomed (o wa3to the bark of cvory trco they hewed down, discovered the proclous febrifuge A third is that certain animals, whllo in n-fevor, happened to know tho bark of tho cinchona trco and were cured. A fourth lu that some person Buffering with fever drank copiously co-piously of n too! of Trnter in which some fallen cinchona trees had long been soaking, charging tho water with the medicinal principle Their speedy cure 16(f to nn Investigation, which discovered quinine. A strango fact 4n this connection is that quinine is not used nn modlclno in the practice of tho native physicians of Peru, Ecuador of Columbia. Tho Indians did not oven know of Its existence ex-istence until enlightened by tho Span-tsards Span-tsards about 250 years ago. |
