Quinine: Malaria and the Quest for a Cure That Changed the World

The fascinating story of the intensive search to discover and possess quinine—the only known cure for malaria

Malaria kills someone every 12 minutes in Africa. Now known mostly as a disease of the tropics, malaria led to the demise of the Roman Empire 2,000 years ago and ravaged Europe for years afterwards. At the start of the 17th century, Jesuit priests developed quinine, an alkaloid made out of the bitter red bark of the cinchona tree from the Andes. When quinine arrived in Europe, the P...