Hot day today; too hot to do any work outside. So I have opted for a relaxing spa bath with a glass of red, a plate of camembert on pumpernickel, and a 350-year global history of malaria in a book with as many pages: The Fever Trail - In Search of the Cure for Malaria by Mark Honigsbaum who explains,
"I first heard about cinchona while on a journalistic assignment in Zurich. The working title of the article I was researching was 'The Biggest Robbery in History'. There is no need to go into the details here, merely to say that it involved billions of dollars' worth of American bonds stolen to order by the Mafia, and that the headline, while a bit of a come on, was technically accurate. The point is that in the evening, after interviewing the Zurich police, I had gone out for a quiet bite to eat. To my alarm, however, all the restaurants were packed and I had ended up having to share a table with a Swiss botanist. Anticipating a dull evening but eager to break the silence, I flippantly asked him what he considered to be the most interesting plant in botany. To my surprise he launched into the story of the hunt for cinchona. It was a tale replete with characters every bit as interesting as the one I was working on. What is more it described an act of international skulduggery that was far more deserving of my headline. For if the theft of the most valuable plant ever to come out of the Andes - perhaps the most valuable medicinal plant ever to be found anywhere - did not constitute 'The Biggest Robbery in History', what did?"
I am no stranger to malaria - from the Italian for 'bad air' as when Horace Walpole in the 1740s spoke of 'a horrid thing called the mal'aria, that comes to Rome every summer and kills one' - and this is the compelling story of the men who risked everything to find the bark of the cinchona tree. Charles Ledger, Richard Spruce and Clements Markham battled through jungles, and survived malnutrition, disease and untrustworthy guides to help provide Europe and the Empire with the quinine they so desperately needed.
