Medicinal Uses
Formerly, the bark itself, prepared in different forms, was used as a drug, but later in the nineteenth and early 20th centuries, natural harvesting of immense quantities formed the base of the production of cinchona alkaloids. This industry was carried on principally in Germany, and the Dutch and English cinchona plantations in Java, Ceylon and India were the chief sources whence the raw material was supplied. Its main active principle, quinine, is now chemically synthesized. The term quinine comes from ghina, or quina-quina, the name given by Peruvian Indians to the bark, meaning medicine of medicines or bark of barks.
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