Chapter 16 The Chemistry of the Cinchona Alkaloids

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the chemistry of the cinchona alkaloids. The cinchona alkaloids are found in the bark of Cinchona and Remijia species, which are indigenous to the high eastern slopes of the Andes from 10°N to 20°S latitude. The great demand for the alkaloids in medicine has led to extensive and successful cultivation and breeding in India, Ceylon, and the Dutch East Indies. Cinchona preparations were introduced into medical use in Europe in the early seventeenth century, and were popularized through the efforts of the wife of the then Spanish Viceroy of Peru, the Countess of Chinchon, who in 1638 was successfully treated for malaria through administration of the hitherto little known remedy. The investigations which culminated in the determination of the structures of the cinchona alkaloids have long been established as a classic of organic chemistry. It is worthy of note that much of knowledge of the chemistry of quinoline and pyridine derivatives, and thence, of heterocyclic compounds in general, had its inception in the results of degradative studies on quinine and its congeners.