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Empire and Alternatives: Swietenia febrifuga and the Cinchona Substitutes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2012

Pratik Chakrabarti
Pratik Chakrabarti
Affiliation:
*Pratik Chakrabarti, PhD, Wellcome Lecturer in History of Modern Medicine, School of History, University of Kent, Rutherford College, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NX, UK; e-mail: p.chakrabarti@kent.ac.uk
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Medical History , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , January 2010 , pp. 75 - 94
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Copyright © The Author(s) 2010. Published by Cambridge University Press

References

1 Regarding the nomenclative variations of the febrifuge see, D J Mabberley, ‘William Roxburgh’s “Botanical description of a new species of Swietenia (mahogany)” and other overlooked binomials in 36 vascular plant families’, Taxon, 1982, 31: 65–73, pp. 65–8.

2 See Mark Harrison, ‘Science and the British empire’, Isis, 2005, 96: 56–63; Roy MacLeod, ‘On visiting the “moving metropolis”: reflections on the architecture of imperial science’, in Nathan Reingold and Marc Rothenberg (eds) Scientific colonialism: a cross-cultural comparison, Washington, DC, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1987, pp. 217–49.

3 C A Bayly, Imperial meridian: the British empire and the world, 1780–1830, London, Longman, 1989, p. 10. See also Phillip B Wagoner, ‘Precolonial intellectuals and the production of colonial knowledge’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 2003, 45: 783–814, p. 783; Thomas Trautmann, ‘Inventing the history of South India’, in Daud Ali (ed.), Invoking the past: the uses of history in South Asia, New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1999, 36–54; Eugene F Irschick, Dialogue and history: constructing South India, 1795–1895, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1994.

4 Kapil Raj, Relocating modern science: circulation and the construction of scientific knowledge in South Asia and Europe, seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, Delhi, Permanent Black, 2006.

5 Richard H Grove, Green imperialism: colonial expansion, tropical island Edens and the origins of environmentalism, 1660–1800, Cambridge University Press, 1995.

6 M R Lee, ‘Plants against malaria. Part 1: Cinchona or the Peruvian bark’, J. R. Coll. Physicians Edinb., 2002, 32: 189–96, pp. 191–2.

7 George Davidson, communicated by Donald Monro, ‘An account of a new species of the bark-tree, found in the Island of St. Lucia’, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond., 1784, 74: 452–6.

8 A memoir of the late William Wright, with extracts from his correspondence, and a selection of his papers on medical and botanical subjects, Edinburgh and London, William Blackwood, 1828, p. 199.

9 William Wright, A botanical and medical account of the Quassia simaruba, or tree which produces the cortex simaruba, Edinburgh, 1778.

10 ‘Medical News’, Medical and Philosophical Commentaries, 1778, 5: 218.

11 A memoir of the late William Wright, op. cit., note 8 above, p. 200.

12 Mark Harrison, ‘The discovery of indigenous febrifuges in the British East Indies, c.1700–1820’, in Merlin Willcox, Gerard Bodeker; Philippe Rasoanaivo; Jonathan Addae-Kyereme (eds), Traditional medicinal plants and malaria, Boca Raton, CRC Press, 2004, pp. 199–203.

13 Saul Jarcho, Quinine’s predecessor: Francesco Torti and the early history of cinchona, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993; Donovan Williams, ‘Clements Robert Markham and the introduction of the Cinchona tree into British India’, Geog. J., 1962, 128: 431–42; Fiammetta Rocco, The miraculous fever-tree: malaria, medicine and the cure that changed the world, London, Harper Collins, 2003; M Honigsbaum, The fever trail: in search of the cure for malaria, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001.

14 Harrison, op. cit., note 12 above.

15 William Roxburgh, ‘A botanical description of a new species of Swietenia (mahogany) with experiments and observations on the bark thereof, in order to determine and compare its powers with those of Peruvian Bark for which it is proposed as a substitute’, addressed to the Honourable Court of Directors of the United East-India Company by their most obedient humble servant Wm Roxburgh, London, 1793. Two copies of this publication are held in the British Library.

16 Ibid, p. 16. In the pre-quinine days astringency was considered to be the active principle of “fever barks”.

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid.

19 Christopher S John to William Roxburgh, 26 Nov. 1792, British Library (hereafter BL), Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections (hereafter APAC), MSS. Eur D 809. John was probably referring to Frederik Christian Winslow, surgeon-in-chief to the Royal Frederic Hospital, Copenhagen. He was famous for his pioneering vaccination work in Denmark, see, E D V Gotfredsen, ‘Some relations between British and Danish medicine in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’, J. Hist. Med. Allied Sci., 1953, 8: 46–55, p. 55.

20 Christopher S John to William Roxburgh, 26 Nov. 1792, BL, APAC, MSS. Eur D 809.

21 Andrew Ross to William Roxburgh, 17 July 1792, Madras, Botany Library, Natural History Museum, London (hereafter NHM), MSS ROX, 1793; Andrew Ross to Roxburgh, 6 Oct. 1791, Madras, NHM, MSS ROX, 1793.

22 Andrew Ross to William Roxburgh, 5 Jan. 1793, Madras, NHM, MSS ROX, 1793.

23 William Roxburgh to James Anderson and the Madras Hospital Board, 17 Feb. 1793, Surgeon General’s Records (hereafter SGR), Tamil Nadu State Archive, Chennai, vol. 9, p. 24.

24 Valentine Conolly to Messrs. Raine, Gahagan, Binny, and Mein, 5 Mar. 1793, ibid., p. 21.

25 Terence Gahagan to Valentine Conolly, 10 March 1793, ibid., p. 22.

26 Nicol Mein to Valentine Conolly, 24 March 1793, ibid., p. 28.

27 George Binny to Valentine Conolly, 6 April 1793, ibid., p. 32.

28 Nicol Mein to Valentine Conolly, 4 June 1793, ibid., p. 50.

29 Andrew Ross to William Roxburgh, 26 Feb. 1793, NHM, MSS ROX, 1793.

30 Andrew Ross to William Roxburgh, 21 Mar. 1793, NHM, MSS ROX, 1793.

31 Ibid.

32 Andrew Ross to William Roxburgh, 28 Sept.1793, NHM, MSS ROX, 1793.

33 Andrew Ross to John Forbes, 2 Nov. 1793, NHM, MSS ROX, 1793.

34 Ibid.

35 Ross to John Forbes, 6 Nov. 1793, NHM, MSS ROX, 1793.

36 The Neem tree, which has been widely used in Indian medicine.

37 William Roxburgh to Joseph Banks, 10 Dec. 1784, Banks Correspondence, BL, Add. MS 33977, fols 272–3.

38 William Roxburgh to Joseph Banks, 10 Dec. 1791, Banks correspondence, BL Add. MS 33979, fols 116–17.

39 Banks had replied that since it had already been printed the Royal Society would not be willing to republish it: “You mention in one of your letters an intention that the paper on Swietenia should appear in the Philosophical Transactions, whether the Commee [sic] of papers who regulate the publications of the R. Soc. would or would not have admitted it was never put to the test for the Court of Directors published it the moment it came to their hands so that the first copy I saw was a printed one”; Joseph Banks to William Roxburgh, 29 May 1796, Banks correspondence, BL Add. MS 33980, fol. 66. Roxburgh’s account did, however, appear in Medical Facts and Observations, ‘An account of a new species of Swietenia (mahogany); and of experiments and observations on its bark, made with a view to ascertain its powers, and to compare them with those of Peruvian Bark, for which it is proposed as a substitute’, Medical Facts and Observations, 1795, 6: 127–61.

40 William Roxburgh to James E Smith, 4 Aug. 1792, 182, J E Smith Manuscripts, Linnean Society Library, London (hereafter Linnean).

41 William Roxburgh to James E Smith, 20 June, 1793, 8.184, J E Smith Manuscripts, Linnean.

42 William Roxburgh to James E Smith, 14 Jan. 1794, 8.188, J E Smith Manuscripts, Linnean.

43 Andreas-Holger Maehle, Drugs on trial: experimental pharmacology and therapeutic innovation in the eighteenth century, Clio Medica, vol. 53, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1999, pp. 287–8.

44 Want of tone: enervation, languor.

45 Roxburgh, op. cit., note 15 above, p. 18.

46 Ibid., p. 24.

47 William Roxburgh to the Madras Government, 30 Aug. 1791, MSS. Eur F.18 (I) K148, APAC. For a detailed analysis of problems of metropolitan recognition for peripheral scientists, see P Chakrabarti, Western science in modern India, metropolitan methods, colonial practices, New Delhi, Permanent Black, 2004, pp. 60–93.

48 Ibid., p. 244. Roxburgh’s aspersions about Dalrymple perhaps had some grounds. A socially ambitious man, Dalrymple, after a career in the colonies, had by this time established his position in London. He was a close friend of Joseph Banks and a regular member of the Royal Society club, dining weekly under Banks’s chairmanship, Andrew S Cook, ‘Dalrymple, Alexander (1737–1808)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/7044, accessed 4 Aug 2005.

49 Joseph Banks to Andrew Roxburgh, 29 May 1796, Banks correspondence, BL Add. MS 33980, fol. 65.

50 A B Lambert, A description of the genus Cinchona … illustrated by figures of all the species hitherto discovered. To which is prefixed Professor Vahl’s dissertation on this genus … Also a description accompanied by figures of a new genus named hyænanche, or, hyæna poison, London, B & J White, 1797, title-page.

51 Banks correspondence, BL Add. MS 33980, fols 121–4.

52 J Fleming, ‘A catalogue of the Indian medicinal plants and drugs’, Asiatick Researches, 1812, 11: 153–96, p. 160.

53 Ibid.

54 Heinrich van Rheede, Hortus Indicus Malabaricus, 12 vols, Amsterdam, 1678, vol. 7, p. 39.

55 Fleming, op. cit., note 52 above, p. 171.

56 J Forbes Royle, Illustrations of the botany and other branches of the natural history of the Himalayan Mountains, and of the flora of Cashmere, 2 vols, London, Wm H Allen, 1839, p. 238.

57 Letter, 25 Apr. 1795, Annals of Medicine, 1796, 1: 387–8.

58 Also mentioned by William Jones, ‘Botanical observations on select Indian plants’, Asiatick Researches, 1795, 4: 237–312, p. 273.

59 Letter from Andrew Roxburgh to the Editor, 10 August 1794, Annals of Medicine, 1796, 1: 390.

60 Ibid, p. 391.

61 Royle, op. cit., note 56 above, p. 143.

62 John A Parrotta, Healing plants of peninsular India, Wallingford, NY, CABI Publishing, 2001, p. 501. He also says that the bark forms the Ayurvedic drug Mamsarohini, used to promote blood coagulation, and to treat oedema, wounds, dental diseases, uterine bleeding, diarrhoea, dysentery, haemorrhage and malarial fever, p. 502.

63 Quoted in Marie Louise de Ayala Duran-Reynals, The fever bark tree: the pageant of quinine, Garden City, NY, Doubleday, 1946, p. 24. Emphasis mine.

64 ‘An account of the Peruvian or Jesuits bark, by Mr. John Gray, F. R. S. Now at Cartagena in the Spanish West-Indies; extracted from some papers given him by Mr. William Arrot, a Scotch Surgeon, who had gather’d it at the place where it grows in Peru. Communicated by Phil. Miller’, F.R.S. &c., Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond., 1737, 40: 81–6, p. 86.

65 Williams, op. cit., note 13 above, p. 435.

66 Clements R Markham, Peruvian Bark: a popular account of the introduction of Chinchona cultivation into British India, 1860–1880, London, John Murray, 1880, p. 6.

67 Ibid., p. 7.

68 Ibid., p. 5. For similar views, see Norman Taylor, Cinchona in Java: the story of quinine, New York, Greenberg, 1945, p. 29.

69 Duran-Reynals, op. cit., note 63 above, pp. 25–6.

70 Whitelaw Ainslie, Materia Indica, London, 1826, p. 126.

71 Ibid., p. xxxvi.

72 Royle, op. cit., note 56 above, p. 240.

73 Andrew Duncan, Supplement to the Edinburgh new dispensatory, Edinburgh, Bell & Bradfute, 1829, p. 37.

74 Lucile H Brockway, Science and colonial expansion: the role of the British royal botanic gardens, New York, Academic Press, 1979, p. 108.

75 John Fleming, A catalogue of Indian medicinal plants and drugs, with their names in the Hindustani and Sanskrit languages, Calcutta, Hindustani Press, 1810, p. 39.

76 Maehle, op. cit., note 43 above, p. 281.

77 Ibid, p. 281.

78 Bonnie S Stadelman, ‘Flora and fauna versus mice and mold’, William and Mary Quarterly, 1971, 28: 595-606. Teresa Huguet-Termes, ‘New World materia medica in Spanish Renaissance medicine’, Med. Hist, 2001, 45: 359–75.

79 Dr Douglass, ‘A short account of the different kinds of ipecacuanha’, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond., 1729, 36: 152–8, p. 152.

80 Hans Sloane, A voyage to the islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica, 2 vols, London, 1707–25, vol. 1, p. xii.

81 Ibid., p. xii.

82 Ibid., p. xii.

83 ‘Medical News’, Medical and Philosophical Commentaries, 1773, 1: 328.

84 Introduction to William Anderson, ‘Observations on the use of the cabbage-tree bark, as an antihelminthic’, Medical and Philosophical Commentaries, 1776, 4: 84–8, p. 84.

85 Ibid, pp. 86–7.

86 William Wright, ‘Description and use of the cabbage-bark tree of Jamaica’, communicated by Richard Brocklesby, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond., 1777, 67: 507–12, p. 511.

87 Andrew Duncan, Tentamen inaugurale, de Swietenia soymida: quam … pro gradu doctoratus, eruditorum examini subjicit Andreas Duncan, Edinburgh, Balfour and Smellie, 1794, p. 2.

88 Andrew Duncan, The Edinburgh new dispensatory, Edinburgh, 1829, p. 356.

89 Maehle, op. cit., note 43 above, p. 258.

90 Duncan, op. cit., note 88 above. Duncan (junior) was deeply influenced by the knowledge of chemistry emerging in the Continent. In his Edinburgh new dispensatory (1803), he focused particularly on the chemical doctrines and new nomenclature introduced by Antoine Lavoisier. As he discussed in its Preface, the period between the 1789 edition of the Dispensatory and his own, had witnessed great developments in chemistry, pharmacy, and natural history which necessitated a new compilation, “so as to render a complete reform absolutely necessary. This, to the best of my abilities, I have attempted” (p. vi). This had faced opposition elsewhere in England, but such a process was vital because, “Materia Medica and Pharmacy are but an application of Natural History and Chemistry” (p. viii). This combination of natural history and chemistry essentially characterized Duncan (junior)’s Dispensatory, and his analysis of the flood of medico-botanical information arriving from various parts of the empire. So, although drawing mainly on the traditions of colonial botanical and linguistic studies, Duncan closely followed Lavoisier’s work on the need for a new language of chemistry as discussed in his treatise: Traité élémentaire de chimie, présenté dans un ordre nouveau et d’après les découvertes modernes, Paris, Cuchet, 1789; Elements of chemistry, translation by Robert Kerr, Edinburgh, William Creech, 1790, Dover facsimile edition, 1965, pp. xiii–xxxvii. Duncan talked of new names given to the various medical materials arriving from the different parts of the world according to the essential chemical component of substances and urged that “it naturally follows, that the names of all substances employed in medicine should be the same with the names of the same substances, according to the most approved systems of Natural History and Chemistry; and that the titles of compound bodies should express as accurately as possible the nature of their composition” (p. viii).

91 ‘Abstract of a memoir on the febrifuge principle of cinchona, by Cit. Seguin’, Annals of Medicine, 1803, 8: 240–1.

92 Jan Golinski, Science as public culture: chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain, 1760–1820, Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp. 112–28.

93 Markham, op. cit., note 66 above, pp. 30–1.

94 Ibid., pp. 31.

95 Steven Lehrer, Explorers of the body, Garden City, NY, Doubleday, 1979, p. 185.

96 Duncan, op. cit., note 87 above.

97 Duncan, ‘Containing experiments and observations on cinchona, tending particularly to shew that it does not contain gelatine, to Mr. Nicholson’, Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry and the Arts, 1803, 6: 226.

98 Ibid., p. 226.

99 Ibid., p. 228.

100 Ibid.

101 Duncan, op. cit., note 88 above, p. 356.

102 Markham, op. cit., note 66 above, pp. 31.

103 Duncan, op. cit., note 73 above, p. 186.

104 Markham, op. cit., note 66 above, p. 32.

105 Duncan, op. cit., note 73 above, p. 186. Emphasis added.

106 Ibid., p. 59.

107 P Breton, ‘On the efficacy of the bark of the Swietenia febrifuga, as a substitute for that of the cinchona’, Medical and Chirurgical Transactions, 1821, 11: 310–29.

108 Ibid, p. 313.

109 E J Waring, Pharmacopeia of India, prepared under the authority of Her Majesty’s Secretary of State in India in Council, London, W H Allen, 1868, p. 55.

110 W Twining to N Wallich, 8 July 1834, Wallich Correspondences (1833–1835) (Box 19), Calcutta Botanical Garden Library.

111 Waring, op. cit., note 109 above, pp. 444–5.

112 Londa Schiebinger, Plants and empire: colonial bioprospecting in the Atlantic world, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2004.

113 Ray Desmond, The European discovery of the Indian flora, Oxford University Press and Royal Botanic Gardens, 1992, p. 222.

114 Markham, op. cit., note 66 above, pp. 34–5.

115 Abhijit Mukherjee, ‘The Peruvian bark revisited: a critique of British cinchona policy in colonial India’, Bengal Past and Present, 1998, 117: 81–102, on pp. 84–5.

116 Williams, op. cit., note 13 above, pp. 431–42.

117 Letter from Mr Henning, assistant surgeon, Oorai, to Cecil Beadon, secretary to the government of Bengal, undated, J. Agr. Hortic. Soc. India, 1857, 9: cclix, quoted in Mukherjee, op. cit., note 115 above, p. 97.