| Description Of Item | A small cylindrical medicine vial with screw top lid, containing brown-black matter. It has a handwritten label titled ‘Quinine [gtt.?]’.
Described by John William Compton in 1880 as a valuable ‘anti-miasmic, anti-septic, anti-phlogistic, anti-pyretic, anti-neuralgic, prophylactic, and probably oxytocic’ (1880, p.3), quinine, a plant native to and utilised for centuries by indigenous peoples of South America, was used throughout the 19th century in the West to treat many different illnesses, but found praise for its anti-malarial properties, which it continues to be used for to this day. Originally administered in the form of the plant’s ‘bitter, nauseous’ bark that had a liability to ‘produce vomiting and diarrhoea’, a light powder was later developed and made into pills (Manson, 1882, p.7). By exerting ‘an influence on that part of the nervous system for which the malarial poison has a special affinity’ (Moinet, 1878, p.12), the introduction of quinine as an anti-malarial drug revolutionised the lives of many white settlers living in Africa and enabled the progress of western colonialist expansion in the country, Europeans no longer dying at such a high rate as a result of malarial sickness. Other than acting as an anti-malarial, quinine was also commonly used in the ‘treatment of bilious diseases’, operating as a palliative (Leeds, 1858, p.4), while Erskine B. Fullerton argued for its use in the case of cholera (1893).
Although it was widely employed for a broad variety of non-malarial cases, primarily involving fever and pain, critical discourse began to emerge questioning the efficacy and safety of the drug. In 1858, G.J. Leeds described quinine as a treatment that often ‘ruins the nervous system’, causing dizziness, headache, ringing in the ears, deafness, and loss of sight (1858, p.4). This critique appears to have gained further traction, as in 1881 William O. Baldwin wrote that ‘within the last twenty years…the practice has to a large extent been abandoned amongst us’; he goes on, stating that he has seen the medicine induce ‘delirium’, ‘mental delusions’ and even death, in cases that ‘would have otherwise recovered’ (1881. p.2). However, quinine still found acclaim throughout the same period, from physicians such as Henry Fraser Campbell who wrote a paper in 1881 about how the drug - contrary to contemporary belief - was able to prevent miscarriage, and for its treatment of malaria in the Southern hemisphere.
References
Baldwin, W, O. 1881. On the poisonous properties of quinine. New York: Bermingham.
Campbell, H, F. 1881. The prophylactic and therapeutic value of quinine in gynecic and obstetric practice.
Compton, J, W. 1880. The Therapeutic Action of Quinine. Madison: The Courier Company Printers.
Fullerton, E, B. 1893. Quinine in cholera. Columbus: Press of Nitschke Bros.
Leeds, G, J. 1858. A new and important discovery: the quinine substitute, or nerve tonic, a certain remedy for fever and ague, &c., &c., and preventive of bilious, Chagres, Panama, and yellow fevers. New York: G.F. Nesbitt & Co.
Manson, O, F. 1882. A treatise on the physiological and therapeutic action of the sulphate of quinine. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co.
Moinet, F, W. 1878. Quinine a physiological antidote to the malarial poison. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd.
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