On Sat, 27 Mar 2004 18:13:50 -0000, "Mary Fisher"
wrote:


"Mary Fisher" wrote in message
. net...

"David Hill" wrote in message
...
Did you know?
Quinine was called the Jesuit bark by the protestants in Cromwell's day
and
thus was not allowed in England.
With the result that when Oliver Cromwell caught malaria there was no
effective treatment and he died of it.

I didn't know that. Did he really die of malaria?

Thanks for that nugget.

Mary

I found:

http://www.olivercromwell.org/faqs8.htm

Which is fascinating - the whole site is worth reading! But I haven't found
any reference to quinine yet ...
Try googling Oliver Cromwell Quinine
First hit is

http://www.historymole.com/cgi-bin/m...=BritCharlesII

" 3 Sep 1658 Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the New
Commonwealth, ruler over England's parliament, dies from malaria. He
is suceeded by his son Richard Cromwell as Lord Protector. When Oliver
Cromwell was dying, he refused to take the only known treatment
(quinine from cinchona) because it was introduced by Jesuits. "

Second hit is
http://www.countrybookshop.co.uk/boo...for=0006532357

"Synopsis
A rich and wonderful history of quinine -- the cure for malaria. In
the summer of 1623, ten cardinals and hundreds of their attendants,
engaged in electing a new Pope, died from the 'mal'aria' or 'bad air'
of the Roman marshes. Their choice, Pope Urban VIII, determined that a
cure should be found for the fever that was the scourge of the
Mediterranean, northern Europe and America, and in 1631 a young Jesuit
apothecarist in Peru sent to the Old World a cure that had been found
in the New -- where the disease was unknown. The cure was quinine, an
alkaloid made of the bitter red bark of the cinchona tree, which grows
in the Andes. Both disease and cure have an extraordinary history.
Malaria badly weakened the Roman Empire. It killed thousands of
British troops fighting Napoleon during the Walcheren raid on Holland
in 1809 and many soldiers on both sides of the American Civil War. It
turned back many of the travellers who explored west Africa and
brought the building of the Panama Canal to a standstill. When, after
a thousand years, a cure was finally found, Europe's Protestants,
among them Oliver Cromwell, who suffered badly from malaria, feared it
was nothing more than a Popish poison. More than any previous
medicine, though, quinine forced physicians to change their ideas
about treating illness. Before long, it would change the face of
Western medicine. Using fresh research from the Vatican and the Indian
Archives in Seville, as well as hitherto undiscovered documents in
Peru, Fiammetta Rocco describes the ravages of the disease, the quest
of the three Englishmen who smuggled cinchona seeds out of South
America, the way quinine opened the door to Western imperial adventure
in Asia, Africa and beyond, and why, even today, quinine grown in the
eastern Congo still saves so many people suffering from malaria."