In Matthew James Crawford’s The Andean Wonder Drug, the author explores the discovery, use, and imperial connections of cinchona bark, spanning from the mid-sixteenth century to the early nineteenth century. Dr. Crawford obtained his PhD and his Masters from the University of California’s San Diego campus and teaches at Kent State University, where he specializes in the early modern Iberian Atlantic world. Dr. Crawford is known for works related to the Andes and healing, such as “The Extirpation of Idolatry and the Secularization of Nature: Jesuits, Missionaries, and Indigenous Healing Knowledge in Early Modern Peru (1590-1710),” “A Cure for Empire? An Andean Wonder Drug and the Politics of Knowledge in the Eighteenth-Century Spanish Empire,” and Drugs on the Page: Pharmacopoeias and Healing Knowledge in the Early Modern Atlantic World, which he co-edited with another author. This compilation of authoritative works establish Dr. Crawford as a subject matter expert in the study of Andean healing knowledge.
In the introduction, Crawford clearly sets the stage for the content of the book, using his sources to construct his argument about the efficacies of cinchona as a true wonder drug. However, the introduction was verbose and could be problematic for readers to digest if they lack sufficient working knowledge of the topic. The major themes of the book are well-documented, and it is apparent that the author plans to address science and empire, early modern science, and the politics of knowledge. The author’s intent in Chapter One is to establish cinchona bark as a remedy from the Andean world. Crawford educates the reader about how cinchona trees grew in the forests of the Ecuadorian and Peruvian Andes, as well as how the bark was used to treat malaria during the Spanish conquest of the region. The usage of cinchona by Andean healers was a reaction to malaria’s arrival in the region, and Crawford’s strength is in giving the reader context about how it became a powerful antimalarial drug. Continuing the theme of colonialism, Chapter Two explains the sixteenth-century origins of cinchona bark as an antimalarial drug and reluctance towards its use to provide context. Europeans were initially hesitant to utilize cinchona bark for malaria, as the bark was seen as “hot,” and one could not treat a fever with something hot according to humoral theory. The author expands upon the themes of science and empire in Chapter Three, where he discusses how cinchona bark became a vital natural resource for the Spanish Empire. Many European empires were interested in the plants that grew in their overseas territories, both for economic and political reasons. However, by the 1770s, the cinchona trees, as a result of intensive harvesting, began to disappear, thus impacting the availability of cinchona bark, the impact of which plays out in later chapters. In an intriguing shift in perspective, Chapter Four discusses the bark collectors and the king’s pharmacists as the main protagonists. The Royal Pharmacy in Madrid was in charge of assessing the quality of the bark, which was difficult to transport and in finite supply. There was a hierarchy of distribution for the cinchona bark, as the best bark was designated for the usage of the royal family, while the lesser qualities were for use by foreign dignitaries and the general public. This might have been an interesting point for the author to have interjected his opinions to see if he had a bias, as he could have brought in medical ethics. The most effective cinchona was used only by the elite, which gives rise to a host of issues involving medicine being viewed as either a right or a privilege. With the shift from pharmacists being the experts on cinchona to botanists filling that role, Chapter Five explores the role of bark collectors. Known as cascarillos, they had to venture deeper into the South American continent to find cinchona trees, as the trees in the Andean region were disappearing. Crawford states that the General Hospital in Madrid was given shipments of cinchona bark to test on patients with various types of malarial fevers. A weakness of Crawford’s work is that I would have liked to have heard the author’s opinion. Chapter Six addresses how plantations had to be introduced in order to replenish the supply of cinchona bark. A strength of Crawford’s work is that he explains why the Spanish crown cared enough about the cinchona trees to suggest replanting them, as cinchona bark was a valuable export from Spanish South America. The author returns to the themes of science and empire in Chapter Seven when he deals with the “war of the quinas,” which was a dispute about the botanical classifications of cinchona between several scientists. One of these scientists supported a royal monopoly on cinchona, viewing a free market as anathema to the vision of empire. The conclusion effectively serves as an epilogue, ending in the nineteenth century with the transplanting of cinchona trees from South America to South Asia to further the British imperial project. British writers claimed that the cinchona tree was about to go extinct, but modern historians have shown that these accounts were exaggerated. Historians play a central role in correcting skewed interpretations of the past, whether they be about the possibility of the cinchona tree going extinct or the destruction of the USS Maine in Havana. The conclusion serves as the culmination of Crawford’s argument, showing that cinchona really was, for all intents and purposes, an Andean wonder drug.
I would recommend this book to someone interested in the pivotal role cinchona bark played in early modern medicine. A notable strength of Crawford’s authoritative text is that he wrote about how cinchona was used as an antimalarial in reaction to the Spanish conquest. In contrast, the weaknesses of the text are its verbosity, especially in the introduction, and its use of foreign terms readers might not understand. In terms of sources utilized, the author had a well-written notes section, but it was strange that he placed essential details that would have provided needed context in his notes. Crawford’s writing style could be verbose and difficult to understand at times, but the overall style of the book was generally readable, and the topic was interesting. The book kept to the themes stated in the introduction, and followed a clear layout as it was broken into two parts that dealt with different themes of the export and use of cinchona bark. As I read the text, I was clear to the intent of the author’s themes in The Andean Wonder Drug were, as the author provided that groundwork in the introduction. A condensed introduction would have been incredibly helpful to understand the author’s intentions better. The author did present his evidence effectively as the nature of the book explored the healing and restorative properties of cinchona bark through the explanation of illness and subsequent treatment with the bark. The book that The Andean Wonder Drug most resembles in the historiography of the Scientific Revolution is Missionary Scientists. Both The Andean Wonder Drug and Missionary Scientists deal with matters of indigenous healing practices that were appropriated by the Spanish for their own needs and imperial desires.
