The Miraculous Fever-Tree - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Miraculous Fever-Tree write by Fiammetta Rocco. This book was released on 2003-08-05. The Miraculous Fever-Tree available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. "Cinchona revolutionized the art of medicine as profoundly as gunpowder had the art of war." -- Bernardino Ramazzini, Physician to the Duke of Modena, Opera omnia, medica, et physica, 1716 In the summer of 1623, ten cardinals and hundreds of their attendants died in Rome while electing a new pope. The Roman marsh fever that felled them was the scourge of the Mediterranean, northern Europe and even America. Malaria, now known as a disease of the tropics, badly weakened the Roman Empire. It killed thousands of British troops fighting Napoleon in 1809 and many soldiers on both sides of the American Civil War. It turned back travelers exploring West Africa in the nineteenth century and brought the building of the Panama Canal to a standstill. Even today, malaria kills someone every thirty seconds. For more than one thousand years, there was no cure for it. Pope Urban VIII, elected during the malarial summer of 1623, was determined that a cure should be found. He encouraged Jesuit priests establishing new missions in Asia and in South America to learn everything they could from the peoples they encountered. In Peru a young apothecarist named Agostino Salumbrino established an extensive network of pharmacies that kept the Jesuit missions in South America and Europe supplied with medicines. In 1631 Salumbrino dispatched a new miracle to Rome. The cure was quinine, an alkaloid made of the bitter red bark of the cinchona tree. Europe's Protestants, among them Oliver Cromwell, who suffered badly from malaria, feared that the new cure was nothing but a Popish poison. More than any previous medicine, though, quinine forced physicians to change their ideas about illness. Before long, it would change the face of Western medicine. Yet how was it that priests in the early seventeenth century–who did not know what malaria was or how it was transmitted–discovered that the bark of a tree that grew in the foothills of the Andes could cure a disease that occurred only on the other side of the ocean? Using fresh research from the Vatican and the Indian archives in Seville, as well as documents she discovered in Peru, award-winning author Fiammetta Rocco chronicles the ravages of the disease; the quest of the three Englishmen who smuggled cinchona seeds out of South America; the way in which quinine opened the door to Western imperial adventure in Asia, Africa and beyond; and how, even today, quinine grown in the eastern Congo still saves the lives of so many suffering from malaria.
The Miraculous Fever-Tree: Malaria, Medicine and the Cure that Changed the World (Text Only)
The Miraculous Fever-Tree: Malaria, Medicine and the Cure that Changed the World (Text Only) - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Miraculous Fever-Tree: Malaria, Medicine and the Cure that Changed the World (Text Only) write by Fiammetta Rocco. This book was released on 2012-05-31. The Miraculous Fever-Tree: Malaria, Medicine and the Cure that Changed the World (Text Only) available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. A rich and wonderful history of quinine – the cure for malaria.
The Miraculous Fever-tree
The Miraculous Fever-tree - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Miraculous Fever-tree write by Fiammetta Rocco. This book was released on 2003. The Miraculous Fever-tree available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Malaria comes from the Italian word Mal'aria or bad air. For centuries malaria killed millions - Alexander the Great was one of its better-known victims - and its debilitating effects have been linked to the demise of ancient Greece and the Roman Empire. The traditional remedies of bloodletting killed off many who may have been spared by the fevers.
The Fever
The Fever - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Fever write by Sonia Shah. This book was released on 2010-06-29. The Fever available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. In recent years, malaria has emerged as a cause célèbre for voguish philanthropists. Bill Gates, Bono, and Laura Bush are only a few of the personalities who have lent their names—and opened their pocketbooks—in hopes of curing the disease. Still, in a time when every emergent disease inspires waves of panic, why aren't we doing more to eradicate one of our oldest foes? And how does a parasitic disease that we've known how to prevent for more than a century still infect 500 million people every year, killing nearly 1 million of them? In The Fever, the journalist Sonia Shah sets out to answer these questions, delivering a timely, inquisitive chronicle of the illness and its influence on human lives. Through the centuries, she finds, we've invested our hopes in a panoply of drugs and technologies, and invariably those hopes have been dashed. From the settling of the New World to the construction of the Panama Canal, through wars and the advances of the Industrial Revolution, Shah tracks malaria's jagged ascent and the tragedies in its wake, revealing a parasite every bit as persistent as the insects that carry it. With distinguished prose and original reporting from Panama, Malawi, Cameroon, India, and elsewhere, The Fever captures the curiously fascinating, devastating history of this long-standing thorn in the side of humanity.
Quinine
Quinine - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Quinine write by Fiammetta Rocco. This book was released on 2004-08-17. Quinine available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Quinine: The Jesuits discovered it. The Protestants feared it. The British vied with the Dutch for it, and the Nazis seized it. Because of quinine, medicine, warfare, and exploration were changed forever. For more than one thousand years, there was no cure for malaria. In 1623, after ten cardinals and hundreds of their attendants died in Rome while electing Urban VII the new pope, he announced that a cure must be found. He encouraged Jesuit priests establishing new missions in Asia and in South America to learn everything they could about how the local people treated the disease, and in 1631, an apothecarist in Peru named Agostino Salumbrino dispatched a new miracle to Rome. The cure was quinine, an alkaloid made from the bitter red bark of the cinchona tree. From the quest of the Englishmen who smuggled cinchona seeds out of South America to the way in which quinine opened the door to Western imperial adventure in Asia, Africa, and beyond, and to malaria's effects even today, award-winning author Fiammetta Rocco deftly chronicles the story of this historically ravenous disease.
