The Bark of Barks: A Long-Kept Secret Cure

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For years people had sought to find the origin of the deadly fever. For malaria may have killed more people than any other disease in history. At one time it was generally thought to be carried in noxious vapors rising from marshes and swamps, and it is from this belief that the term malaria – literally, “bad air” – was derived. In 1880 a French scientist, Charles Laveran, discovered that the exhausting fever and chills that characterized the disease were caused by several species of dangerous parasites found throughout the world, and transmitted from person to person through the bite of the female anopheles mosquito.

An Ungrateful Mob

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A remedy fur such a killer disease should have been welcome. But this was not to be the case: instead of showing gratitude, most of 17th century Protestant Europe rejected “Jesuits’ bark” as a papist conspiracy. In London, rioters thronged the streets, spreading the rumor that the crushed bark was part of a Catholic plot to wipe out Protestantism. It was even claimed that the Jesuits themselves were trying to poison the king. Meanwhile, learned physicians scorned the cure as a folk remedy.

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One example of the prejudice against the Jesuits was exhibited by the English Puritan ruler, Oliver Cromwell, who suffered recurring bouts of malaria all his life. He eventually died from it rather than take what he called the “devil’s powder.”

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But only 20 years later, Charles II, England’s “merry monarch,” did not hesitate to call in a fashionable London charlatan, Robert Talbor, who had become well known among the wealthy for his malaria cures. When publicly mocking the Jesuits, the wily Talbor was secretly giving his patients a bitter-tasting concoction made from Jesuits’ bark.

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Not only did Talbor cure the king of malaria, but – to the dismay of the medical profession – he was knighted for his efforts and, on the king’s orders, made a member of the prestigious Royal College of Physician. Talbor’s reputation spread abroad. In 1679 he was summoned to France by Louis XIV, whose son and heir had malaria. After curing him, Talbor was rewarded with lifetime pension plus 3,000 gold crowns for the prescription – which Louise then promised to keep secret until after Talbor’s death.

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When Talbor died, in 1681, the French king revealed the formula: six drams of rose leaves, two ounces of lemon juice, and a strong infusion from the powdered Jesuits’ bark – dispensed in wine. Wine was necessary since the alkaloids in the bark, not soluble in water, dissolve in alcohol.

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With the prescription at last made public, the Jesuits’ cure finally accepted by the now-eager medical proffession. Although it was certain that the cinchona bark produced the cure for malaria, it was not until 1820, more than 100 years later, that two French doctors, Joseph Pelletier and Joseph Caventou, isolated the alkaloid in the bark that was the curative agent. They called it quinine, after the Quechua word quinquina, “the bark of barks.”