The Miraculous Fever-Tree: Malaria and the Quest for a Cure That Changed the World.

FIAMMETTA ROCCO 

Growing up in Africa, Rocco was touched directly by malaria. She had it; her father suffers regular bouts; and her grandfather died from it. Because of this, the story of quinine resonates deeply for her and makes this a compelling book. For hundreds of years, malaria was a scourge that plagued Europe, Africa, and North and Central America. The cure, however, came from the foothills of the high Andes, in the bark of the cinchona trees. Quinine was first brought to Europe in 1631. But the disease had centuries of destruction yet to wield. Thousands of British troops succumbed to it while fighting Napoleon in 1809. The building of the Panama Canal came to a halt in 1889 when malaria and yellow fever struck. Rocco relates the story of how the seed of a New World plant eventually conquered a mainly Old World disease, as well as how the process changed Western medicine and civilization. HarpC, 2003, 348 p., b&w plates, hardcover, $24.95.