6 - “You came a long way to see a tree”

Summary

O true apothecary!

Thy drugs are quick.

Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

In 1898, Sir Patrick Manson announced to the world (actually to the British Medical Association at their annual meeting in Edinburgh) that Ronald Ross had successfully proven that Plasmodium sp. was transmitted by mosquitoes. In the same speech, Manson said, “in virtue of the new knowledge thus acquired, we shall be able to indicate a prophylaxis of a practical character, and one which may enable the European to live in climates now rendered deadly by this pest.” Of course, he was aware that there was already something available for the treatment of malaria, namely quinine, and that it had been available for a long, long time.

In the previous essay, I wrote about the discovery of ivermectin by Bill Campbell and his colleagues at Merck and the Kitasato Institute in Tokyo. In the case of ivermectin, these folks were looking for it, or at least were looking for something like it. In the process, they developed a plan and research protocol, conducted a vigilant and extensive search, made the discovery, defined the drug's structure, improved it structurally and functionally, tested it under highly controlled conditions, and then marketed it world wide. In other words, it was a carefully configured approach to discovery.

Quinine is a completely different story. In fact, I do not think it was really ‘discovered’, certainly not in the sense of ivermectin. Quinine just sort of appeared.