![]() Made from the bitter red bark of the cinchona tree found in the Andes, the alkaloid cured the disease that had undermined the Roman empire, killed thousands of British troops in Holland in 1809 and ravaged both armies in America’s civil war.Īfter Cod - an international bestseller translated into 15 languages - American journalist Kurlansky wrote Salt and Salmon. Less than a decade later a Jesuit apothecarist sent some quinine from Peru where the malady was unknown. Others followed Kurlansky and wrote books on coffee, saffron, black tulips, and many other left-of-field subjects.įiammetta Rocco, 20 years ago, gave us The Miraculous Fever-Tree: Malaria, Medicine, and the Cure that Changed the World describing how, after ten cardinals and hundreds of their staff died of malaria while electing a new pope in 1623, the newly-anointed Pope Urban VIII determined to find a cure. In the decades since, our world has had to confront the consequences of insatiable rapacity in more ways than the collapse of once-unimaginably abundant Atlantic cod stocks. ![]() ![]() ![]() When, 26 years ago, Mark Kurlansky published his wonderful book Cod: A Biography of The Fish that Changed the World he rejuvenated the genre that considered great change through a narrow, single prism. ![]()
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