The use of quinine during the Civil War.

  • Churchman, John W. (John Woolman), 1877-1937.
Date:
[1906]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The use of quinine during the Civil War. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    rank of major in Anderson's Cavalry. Yet the South got its U80] drug—stored on one occasion in mattresses; and it paid for it, at one time as much as $15 an ounce. After the war, however, the firm, though becoming fabu- lously wealthy, began to become extremely unpopular as well. The war duty on the bark had been lifted in 1870; in 1872 the duty on the sulphate had been reduced to 20 per cent. Yet the Philadelphia firms became by no means lean kine. The monopoly, it began to be rumored, was being overdone; the tariff-tax on quinine, prohibiting the sick-poor from using the drug, was grimly nicknamed the tax on blood; what had been termed business sagacity began to look like scandalous greed; and a popular cry for redress sounded. Even the New York Tribune, the most rabid high tariff newspaper in the country, fought valiantly for repeal; and finally the Govern- ment yielding to the country's importunity removed the tariff on quinine under the Dingley bill of 1897. Meanwhile the drug has become immeasurably cheaper. Cinchona has been trans- planted to Java, Ceylon, and India, where it grows so exten- sively that the supply exceeds the demand. Improvement in cultivating the bark has resulted in doubling the yield of quinine to the pound of cinchona. Solvents other than alcohol have come into use—fusel-oil and coal-tar chiefly. And the quinine of commerce—which was quoted in 1861 at $2.10 the ounce and brought as high as $15.00 below the line—sells for t181l 21 cents an ounce. Looking ahead then to our next civil, or perhaps colonial, war, it does not seem likely that the quinine problem will loom large. The question of duty has been settled; and even if this were not so the government would probably settle it in the event of war by passing a general provision, as was done at the time of the Spanish War, to suspend the operation of the tariff law on all materials required by the War Department. There are still only three firms in the country manufacturing the drug—the two already mentioned and the New York Quinine and Chemical Company. Yet the Government might easily elect, if monopoly again threatened to become embar- rassing, to establish its own chemical and supply factories— as was done during the Civil War, with a saving to the Gov-