Edgar Buckingham: Fluorescence of Quinine Salts

Malaria, an often-fatal disease, has been a worldwide plague for several thousand years. The discovery of the efficacy of substances present in the bark of various cinchona trees, native to the Andes, provided some relief. A real antimalarial drug was not available until 1820, when Joseph Baptiste Caventou (1795-1877) and Josephe Pelletier (1788-1842) isolated quinine from the bark (1). Eighty years after their discovery, a statue honoring these chemists was erected in Paris (Fig. 1).