quinine (kwī`nīn', kwĭnēn`), white crystalline alkaloid with a bitter taste. Before the development of more effective synthetic drugs such as quinacrine, chloroquine, and primaquine, quinine was the specific agent in the treatment of malaria malaria, infectious parasitic disease that can be either acute or chronic and is frequently recurrent. Malaria is common in Africa, Central and South America, the Mediterranean countries, Asia, and many of the Pacific islands.
..... Click the link for more information. . Almost insoluble in water, it dissolves readily in alcohol and other organic solvents. It is derived from the bark, called quina quina by the indigenous people of Peru, of several species of Cinchona and is used in the form of a salt, especially the sulfate. By the middle of the 17th cent. Jesuit missionaries had brought cinchona bark to Europe from South America, and quinine was isolated in 1820 by the French chemists J. B. Caventou Caventou, Joseph Bienaimé (zhôzĕf` byăNnāmā` käväNt
..... Click the link for more information. and P. J. Pelletier Pelletier, Pierre Joseph (pyĕr zhôzĕf` pĕlətyā`), 1788–1842, French chemist. With J. B.
..... Click the link for more information. ; chemical synthesis was achieved in 1944 by R. B. Woodward Woodward, Robert Burns, 1917–80, American chemist and educator, b. Boston, grad. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (S.B., 1936; Ph.D., 1937). He taught at Harvard from 1938, becoming Donner professor of science there in 1960.
..... Click the link for more information. and W. E. Doering, American chemists.

Certain strains of the malarial parasite Plasmodium falciparum have now developed a resistance to chloroquine, and quinine is again the preferred drug in some regions. Quinine also has been used medicinally to allay fever and pain, to induce uterine contractions during labor, and as a sclerosing, or hardening, agent in the treatment of varicose veins. It is added to soft drinks called tonics, which are often mixed with alcoholic beverages. Excessive dosage or continuous use of quinine may cause cinchonism, characterized by ringing in the ears, headache, dizziness, changes in blood pressure, and even death.

Bibliography

See F. Rocco, The Miraculous Fever-Tree (2003).

quinine

Alkaloid found in the bark of cinchona trees and shrubs. The chemical structure of this heterocyclic compound is large and complex, with several rings. For the 300 years preceding the 1940s, when newer antimalarials were developed, quinine was the only drug known to Western medicine for the prevention and treatment of malaria. The first chemical compound ever used successfully against an infectious disease, it has benefited more people than any other such drug in history and is still used to treat malaria, often in combination with other drugs. Quinine is also a flavouring agent in some carbonated beverages, including tonic water.

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Bibliography

quinine

quinine