Nature's Pharmacy
Cinchona tree
For centuries, Native Peruvians used dried bark from the South
American cinchona tree for various medicinal purposes, including as
a muscle relaxant and fever reducer. In the 1600s, Europeans began
treating malaria patients with the bark. Finally, in 1820, French
chemists Pierre Joseph Pelletier and Joseph Caventou extracted
quinine from the bark, which became the first pure chemical
isolated from a plant and utilized against a specific disease.