Cinchona Bark and Imperial Science in the Spanish Atlantic, 1630-1800
by
Matthew James Crawford
Language: English
Release Date: July 15, 2016
In the eighteenth century, malaria was a prevalent and deadly disease, and the only effective treatment was found in the Andean forests of Spanish America: a medicinal bark harvested from cinchona trees that would later give rise to the antimalarial drug quinine. In 1751, the Spanish Crown asserted...