Here are seven medicinal plant species that have proved their worth in gold and may well have more to give to the future of ...

As early as the 17th century, people were using the bark of the cinchona tree to extract quinine, which was effective in treating deadly malaria. Soda water has a history all its own. Joseph ...

In Incan mythology, Mama Koka was the god of the coca plant which originally grew from her torn apart body. Today, coca ...

The task that faced the cinchona tree hunters was a formidable one ... Only a few species had bark with a high yield of quinine, but these were not easy to identify, as trees of the same species ...

If we look at how the bark of the cinchona tree is used to treat malaria, we can see the cutting-edge chemistry of quinine binding an enzyme essential for the malaria parasite’s survival.

Totaquine, like quinine, is made from cinchona bark, but fewer bark components are discarded. What little comes from South American cinchona trees serves as a wartime substitute for quinine.

Fortunately there was relief available for malaria in the form of a drug called quinine, but it could only be extracted from the bark of the cinchona tree which grows on the remote eastern slopes ...