Quinine, a chemical compound used to treat malaria, comes from the bark of cinchona trees, a genus native to the Andes of South America. Cinchona bark had been used by Indigenous people to treat fevers for thousands of years, but it was not until the introduction of malaria into the Americas following the arrival of Europeans after 1492 that the possibility of its use as a treatment for the disease was identified. Although the earliest reports of the plant being used to treat malaria date from the sixteenth century, it was not until the middle of the eighteenth century that cinchona trees and their properties were accurately described.
In 1860, the British explorer Sir Clements Markham travelled to Peru to collect specimens of cinchona trees despite Peruvian attempts to ban their export. After managing to gain some of the plants, Markham sailed to India where he identified suitable places to establish plantations in the country as well as others in Burma (Myanmar) and on Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Although many trees died following their transport to Asia, several survived and were able to be supplemented by further plants brought from Peru.
This book, The Quinology of the East Indian Plantations, consists of the findings made by the chemist John Eliot Howard following experiments made in between 1869 and 1876 on bark taken from trees grown on these plantations. In 1874, Howard was elected Fellow of the Royal Society due to the importance of his work.