Quinine is an alkaloid obtained from the bark of several species of the cinchona tree. Until the development of synthetic drugs, quinine was used as the primary treatment of malaria, a disease that kills over 100 million people a year. The cinchona tree is native to the eastern slopes of the Andes Mountains in South America. Today, the tree is cultivated throughout Central and South America, Indonesia, India, and some areas in Africa. The cinchona tree contains more than 20 alkaloids of which quinine and quinidine are the most important. Quinidine is used to treat cardiac arrhythmias.

South American Indians have been using cinchona bark to treat fevers for many centuries. Spanish conquerors learned of quinine's medicinal uses in Peru, at the beginning of the 17th Century. Use of the powdered " Peruvian bark" was first recorded in religious writings by the Jesuits in 1633. The Jesuit fathers were the primary exporters...