A New Anti-malarial Drug

Abstract

THE valuable work of I. M. Tonkin and T. S. Work on two new anti-malarial drugs¹ has brought to light the action of a well-known Eastern remedy. Dichroa febrifuga, of the family Saxifragacese, is a shrub found from China and north-eastern India to Java and the Philippine Islands. In the form of a decoction, the leaves and stems have been used in Indo-China for quotidian, tertian and quartan ague. When in India more than fifty years ago, a native physician sent to me some stems of the plant as a fever remedy and suggested that it might contain an alkaloid similar to quinine. The drug yielded no alkaloid but a glucoside, and differing from other astringent plants of this family it afforded no tannin. Later, a sample of the same drug was sent as a fever medicine used by the Chinese in Malaya. It is satisfactory to note that recent pharmacological research confirms the suitability of the specific name—febrifuga—given to the plant by Loureiro (Fl. Cochinale) so long ago as 1790.