Cinchona or China is the homeopathic name for a remedy prepared from the bark of a tree called Red Bark, or Kina-Kina in Peru. The Kina-Kina is a large tree with a reddish trunk and pink flowers, native to the hot climates and moist soils of South America, Africa, and Asia. It belongs to the class of Rubiacea. From the bark and the roots of six-year-old Kina-Kina trees, pharmacists derive active medicinal ingredients such as catechins, which are combined with alkaloids quinine, quinidine, cinchonine, and cinchonidine.
Cinchona was introduced to European apothecaries by Jesuit monks around 1630, after the Jesuits followed the conquistadors in order to impose their religion on the invaded people of Peru. Eager to use Peruvian natural resources and lore, the invaders quickly learned from native doctors of the wonderful fever-fighting properties of Kina-Kina, which were desperately needed to treat the malignant fevers of the tropical climate.
There are references to intermittent deadly fevers in the earliest written records. They occur in Hippocrates’ writings and Vedic scriptures, but Aztec and Mayans medical records do not refer to any malaria-like disease. It is possible, then, that "swamp fever" was yet another "gift" of a "superior" civilization.
In the nineteenth century, the Dutch established cinchona plantations in Java and quickly monopolized the quinine market. When Java was invaded by the Japanese in WWII, the stocks of natural quinine were depleted and a substitute was urgently needed. In 1944, two American chemists, Robert Burns Woodward and William Doering, discovered how to synthesize quinine from petrochemicals. Today, chloroquine and mefloquine are the most popular synthetic antimalarial drugs.
When the European pharmacists procured quinine and other exotic medicines from the West Indies, they did not bother to learn the proper, traditional means to administer them and soon began to abuse them. The following is an excerpt from the chapter on China by in A Dictionary of Practical Materia Medica, by one of the most prominent homeopathic writers of the last century, a British physician, John Henry Clark. He started working on the dictionary in 1893; it took fourteen years to complete:
The story of [China’s] introduction into European medical practice is one of the romances of the Healing Art; as the story of its frightful abuse is one of its many tragedies. ‘According to Humboldt,’ writes Teste, ‘about 500,000 lb. of this bark are annually exported to Europe for the purpose of being converted into sulphate of quinine.’
Well may Teste add the exclamation, ‘Poor patients!’ As with almost every other good thing that comes into its hands, allopathy has contrived to do an infinity of harm with quinine to make up for the good. Some forms of intermittent fever it will cure, if too much of it is not given; others it will suppress or change from intermittent to continuous.
The result of suppression is thus sketched by Hahnemann’s master-hand: ‘True, [the patient] can no longer complain that the paroxysms of his original disease occur any more on regular days and at regular hours; but behold his livid earthly complexion, his bloated countenance, his languishing looks! Behold how difficult it is for him to breathe, see his hard and distended abdomen, the swelling of the hypochondria; see how his stomach is oppressed and pained by everything he eats, how loose his bowels are, and how unnatural and contrary to what they should be; how his sleep is restless, unrefreshing, and full of dreams. Behold him weak, out of humour and prostrated, his sensibility morbidly excited, his intellectual faculties weakened; how much more does he suffer than when he was a prey to his fever!’ (Materia Medica Pura).
The number of patients who have been consigned to an early grave by quinine probably falls short only of the number that mercury can claim. When first introduced it was declared on the highest authority to be incapable of harm ‘in whatever dose it may be taken.’ It is only at the end of the nineteenth century that some allopaths are discovering that it is more deadly than the deadliest West African fevers.
China has a specific relationship to homeopathic history because, according to historical records, Samuel Hahnemann began thinking about the natural laws of disease while translating the writings of Cullen on the properties of cinchona. Hahnemann apparently disagreed with Cullen’s assertion that the healing value of cinchona in treating certain ague (a type of fever) is attributable to the fact that it belongs to the class of bitter compounds (more information on the Medicinal Properties of Plants are at the MoonLand Library). Hahnemann self-administered the drug and developed symptoms that were very similar to ague.
Homeopaths often state unequivocally that Hahnemann "discovered" the law Like Cures Like by experimenting with quinine. However, this law is as ancient as the art of healing itself, and, together with the Law of the Minimum Dose, has been practiced by ancient and modern healers and witches throughout the world. (These laws entered the writings of Paracelsus, who diligently studied the medical practices of European witches.) A widely read and educated man, Hahnemann was aware of the controversy between the proponents of similar and contrary cures in ancient and medieval texts and tried to decide which cure was more efficacious (in fact, both can be efficacious).
The abuse of antimalarial medication by the allopathic medical community unfortunately continues and contributes increasingly to the evolution of drug-resistant parasites, especially in East Africa, Central and South America, and the Far East. Recently two types of wormwood with a well-known vermifugal action, the Chinese Artemisia apiacea and homeopathic Artemicia absinthium have shown promising results in fighting malaria, but parasites will probably evolve to resist them as well.
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