BEHIND THE PILLS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 June 1943, Page 2

BEHIND THE PILLS

DISCOVERY OF QUININE

AND MORPHIA INTERESTING STORY REVEALED. ROTARY CLUB ADDRESS. The interesting story behind the discovery of quinine and morphia was told to Masterton Rotary Club members yesterday by Mr Norman Lee. managing-secretary of the Wairarapa Hospital Board. Mr Lee entitled his address: “The Men Behind the Pills.” Count Chinchon, the Spanish Governor of Peru, in the Seventeenth Century, saved his wife with a preparation of brownish grey bark brought to him by a settler, who said it was from the . quinaquina tree. Some of the bark '■ was sent home to Spain. The Spaniards traded extensively in the bark, and it was distributed to rich and poor by Jesuit Fathers. That started trouble. So long as the malaria cure was I called “Peruvian bark” or “Powder of the Countess” all was well, but when it became known as “Jesuit’s Powder” that was the end. Many years afterwards an Englishman named Talbor monopolised the use of the remedy and in the eighteenth century the name of the tree was changed to Cinchona in honour of the long dead Governor s wife. The Spaniards had a very profitable monopoly and many attempts were made to get plants or seeds in an endeavour to propagate the trees in other countries. Some were smuggled out and the trees grew beautifully in India and Ceylon, but the planters gave up Cinchona in preference to tea. The Dutch cultivated it in Java and placed it on the market at a reasonable cost for the benefit of the world at large. Scientists after many years produced “Atabrine,” or synthetic quinine, which although a malaria killer was not a complete substitute for quinine .

Morphia was derived from opium, or dried poppy juice, and had been in use for centuries. It was the only drug, if administered with care, that could reduce pain and produce sleep with reasonable safety. Early in the nineteenth century a German youth named Frederick Sertuerner commenced work with a village chemist. The village doctor complained bitterly of the opium that was being supplied; it was not uniform and acted in some cases, but had no effect in others. This set the German youth thinking and he commenced experimenting in an endeavour to separate the substances of which poppy juice was composed. After years of patient research he separated an alkali which produced sleep. One night some years later he could not sleep on account of raging toothache and to stop it he took some of the crystals he had extracted from opium and went to sleep and wakened some hours later. The pain was gone. He carefully put all his discoveries and knowledge on paper with a description of the chemical and medical properties of his crystals.