Quinine, a special anti-parasite used in pills and tonic water, and gives it a unique bitter taste. It was a common product in the over the counter pharmacy product until it was banned by the Food and Drug Administration. Why? The side effects of the pill could be deadly unless used under professional medical attention. Yet it’s still used in tonic water? To find out why we have to go deeper into the topic of quinine and it’s history.
In 1633 an Augustinian monk wrote about the uses of “the fever tree.” First the bark was used for the fever and chills of malaria. But after time, it was morphed into a pill for leg cramps and the fancy drink tonic water. First it was used for malaria and the USA didn’t worry for decades. Then it was found
In the story “ The Landlady” Billy was drinking his tea that the landlady had made for him. He had said in the story that it tasted like “bitter almonds” . There is two things that could have happened here, either the landlady can’t make good tea, or she was poisoning Billy. If the landlady was poisoning him, she would have been using cyanide. It would make sense if she killed him with cyanide because Billy had mentioned a war going on, and in WWII British and American secret services developed the "L-pill", which stands for lethal pill. They would give these L-pills to agents that way if they were captured they would bite this pill and die. The pill had a thin plastic casing and was filled with potassium cyanide.Which of course has the smell
In Cherokee medicine, it is believed that councils of animals created diseases in order to avenge the loss of their families and living spaces. The plants, being sympathetic to humans, decided to each furnish a cure for these diseases. It is believed that the spirit of the plant will tell a sick person which one to use to cure his illness.
Medieval medicine was made from herbs, spices, and resins. It was applied in drinks, pills, rubs, baths, washes, ointments, purges, and poultices. Head pains were treated with sweet-smelling herbs. Mixtures of henbane and hemlock were applied to aching joints. Coriander was used to reduce fever. Stomach pains were treated with wormwood, mint, and balm. Lung illnesses were given medical treatment of a medicine which was made up of liquorice and comfrey. Horehound cough syrups and drinks were used for head-colds, cough, and chest congestion. Wounds were cleaned with vinegar as it was bel...
Today doctors can treat this disease with minimal efforts, however, during the 14th century very few weren’t sure on how this disease actually spread and therefore didn’t know how to treat it. Physicians used to practice crude and unorthodox techniqu...
The medicines used were essentially herbal remedies. A few examples of the medicines were “laudanum or paregoric (opiate tinctures), calomel (a mercury compound), cream of tartar and spirits of lavender” (Hedbor). Quinine, a crystalline compound made from cinchona bark, was used to treat Malaria. Malaria was a major cause of death during the Revolutionary War, “South of New England, malaria had a devastating effect on the population, particularly to newcomers to the climate, who had no acquired immunity to the disease”
According to Miller (2002), the Vikings were believed to have access to Amanita mushrooms, which contain bufotenine, and may be linked to their famed Berserker rage (p. 60). In the 1960's, young people in Austrila had taken to toad licking due to a newspaper report jokingly stating that toad slime was hallucinogenic. This resulted in making cane toad an illegal substance under the Drug Misuse Act. Since the government banned it, this encouraged more people to try it and the practice spread to the United States. After a few people became violently ill, the United States banned bufotenine in 1967 (Gahlinger, P. M., 2004). According to Schultes (1969), Native Americans made a strong hallucinogenic snuff, known as cohoba, made from the beans Anadenanthera peregrina. This was used by shamans to transcend this realm and into the other. Albert Most, who was a proponent of recreational use of Bufo alvarius venom, wrote The Psychedelic Toad of the Sonoran Desert , which detailed how to extract and smoke the secretions (Gossop, 2013, p. 16). Aphrodisiacs (Rockhard and Love Stone) and herbal supplements (Chan Su) caused men and women to die from a heart attack. These products contained dried, toxic secretions of cane toads. This resulted in the FDA to ban the sell of Chan Su, Rockhard, and Love Stone (Cartwright
Stories of Native Americans contributions to the advancement of health and medicine traces were discovered in a small town in Nali, Africa. The very first onset of the beggining of modern pharmacology is the substance called "quinine". This is the substance that came from a bark of a tree that grew in high elevations. The Indians has been using this substance to cure malaria, cramps, chills, hear-rythm disorders and many other ailments. Prior to the disovery of quinine, the old world suffers enormously because the lack of medical knowledge that the old world posess. Quinine would have probably been introduce somewhere in 1630, as it was mention in a belgian medical text. Quinine made extensive settlement in America possible due to the fact that it cures malaria better than any other medicine and because its potent medicinal values. Until recently, quinine has been sold in Timbuktu as a medical tonic that promotes vitality and refreshments drink. This Indian tonic is apearant through out the city of Timbuktu in Africa. It`s a relic of a long line of deriratives tonics sold in the ninteenth and early twentieth century as a cures for all known imaginable ailments. There were realtive of the tree that provide quinine also cure amoebic dysentery and lethal infection of the intestine. Amoebic dysentery is a disease that cause by ingestions of certain amoebes, the symptoms range from bloody diarrhea to high fever. Ipecac is a medincine the Indians of the Amazon had created using three to four yearl old cepahlaelis ipecacuanla and c. acuminia plants to cure intestinal infections that is deadly among children. Up till now, poison clinic through o...
Christopher Hamlin, “Edwin Chadwick, ‘Mutton Medicine’, and the Fever Question,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 70 (1996): 233-265.
The Native Americans were the first people to use Echinacea for medical purposes. They believed that sufferers with minor disorders such as colds to more serious conditions like snakebites could benefit from usage. They even utilized the herb for veterinary medicine for horses. In the early 1900’s, the herb gained commercial popularity and was widely sold throughout the United States. Consumers had high hopes that Echinacea would cure or prevent many different illnesses. In 1910 however, the American Medical Association claimed that the drug was useless but many people continued to purchase and use the supplement until about 1930. Th...
Native Americans form of medicine to treat illnesses and injuries were more along the line of herbs and remedies they made. For example, to relieve the common cold and act as a throat aid, the roots of the sannich plant would be crushed into a juice and then swallowed, this acted as cough medicine. Native Americans had many experiment trials and errors with natural plants and herbs to determine their properties, effects and which would most benefit them. As the Spanish, English and other Europeans arrived in American, Native Americans shared their knowledge to them about their remedies and other herbal medicine and healing practices. Europeans took careful notice of these practices and soon started developing ways of their own. One Spanish explorer who took much interest in medicine, was Francisco Vasquez Coronado, who eventually developed the first medical book in American in 1570.
In the same way someone today might take advil for a headache, the Victorians would drink laudanum: “[Opium] was used, or recommended, at one time or another, to treat every disease or condition imaginable … Society in general had no particular fears about their use.” Until the 1860s, opium was bought and sold with no restrictions, like any other good. Post-1868, only licensed apothecaries or pharmacies could fill prescriptions, but it was not until 1916 that the “Defense of the Realm Act” began to outlaw the overall sale of narcotics. Victorians were not, however, totally blind when it came to the effects of these drugs. Opium Dens, which became popular towards the end of the century, were held in disgust and deep abhorrence by the public.
Hippocrates' authority lasted throughout the Middle Ages and reminded alchemists and medical experimenters of the potential of inorganic drugs. In fact, a distant descendant of Hippocrates' prescriptions was the use of antimony salts in elixirs (alcoholic solutions) advocated by Basilius Valentius in the middle of the 15th century and by the medical alchemist Phillippus Aureolus Paracelsus (born Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim, in Switzerland, 1493-1541).
Over the centuries, several treatment methods have been utilized by humans for remedy diseases when they caught. Two of them are modern medicine and traditional medicine. Traditional medicine, which is also called alternative treatment, is older than modern medicine. This effective treatment had been used for many centuries before modern medicine was found. On the contrary, modern medicine has been used since the 1900’s (Lyons). In this system, drugs’ tests are carefully done in the safe laboratories, and their side effects are identified before they are given to the patient. Moreover, the effects of the pills are written on the leaflets which are found in the drug packages to warn the patients for these effects. However, sometimes the side effects are not blocked, so people have to take another pill to get better. It makes people take more chemicals into their bodies. Even traditional medicine, give its place to the modern medicine when its beginning times, it is used efficaciously like modern medicine at the present time. In course of time, people will gain reliance on traditional medicine again, since alternative medicine is more efficient and powerful in order to get better and soothe the diseases than modern medicine. In fact, in traditional medicine, there are fewer drugs, side effects, holistic therapy that people can be availed.
Historical writings of Hippocrates (460 BC-377 BC) refer to the use of a white powder made from the bark and leaves of willow trees for pain relief and fevers (Bellis). Native American lore also reports the chewing of willow bark and preparation of willow water for ailments such as toothache and headache (Phaneuf, 2005). In the 1700’s Edmund Stone, While trying to find a substitute for cinchona bark used for treating malaria, began experimenting with white willow bark and found it to be highly effective in treating pain and fevers (White Willow Bark). In 1826, a highly impure version of salicin was reported by Brugnatelli and Fontana (Bellis). Johann Buchner, in 1828, in the search for the active ingredient in willow bark, isolated yellow, needle-like crystals which he named salicin (Bellis). Soon after, Henri Leroux improved the extraction procedure, and in 1838, Raffaele Pira was able to split salicin into a sugar and an aromatic compound (Bellis). He converted this aromatic compound by hydrolysis and oxidation to the compound known now as salicylic acid (Bellis). In 1899, the German scienti...
When you are sick you take medicine, but there are many remedies for the same problems. The use of herbal remedies traces back to the Chinese in the use of Traditional Chinese Medicine, as well by a compiled book in China written back more than 2,000 years ago (Wachtel-Galor & Benzie, 2011). Modern medicine has roots that are more recent in the development and production of synthesize drugs (Wachtel-Galor & Benzie, 2011). The old generations took herbal remedies to improve their health, but now as time and people, progressed modern medicine comes on top. Herbal and modern medicines have good and bad points, but one has qualities that are more effective.