Wufei anti-epidemic star ─ hydroxychloroquinine, formerly in the six tortoise forest! Cinchona tree bears witness to a century-old history of epidemic prevention in Taiwan

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In order to deal with COVID-19 (commonly known as "Wuhan pneumonia"), experts all over the world have racked their brains. European infection authority Didier Raoult found that the commonly used drug "hydroxychloroquinine" (hydreoxychloroquine) in the department of rheumatic immunology can fight the epidemic effectively. Following China, South Korea, France and the United States, Taiwan's Central epidemic Command Center also announced on March 26 that patients can use "hydroxychloroquinine" with the permission of doctors.

Hydroxychloroquinine is a synthetic drug with a long history, cheap and easy to make. Its predecessor, quinine, was made from the bark of cinchona tree and was once the only sacred medicine to treat malaria in Taiwan during the Japanese occupation. Cinchona trees were introduced into Taiwan during the Japanese occupation, especially in Kaohsiung. It was not until the mid-1940s that synthetic "quinine" came out one after another, and cinchona trees gradually withdrew from the stage of history.

Cinchona trees on the mountain have not disappeared. As long as you walk into the Fenggang Forest Road of the six Turtles Experimental Forest, cinchona trees can be seen standing proudly on the side of the road. After years of flowering, fruiting, seeds falling to the ground and sprouting, it has become a part of the six tortoise forest. Although malaria is gone, there is a new virus coming. Like its predecessor, quinine, hydroxychloroquinine has brought dawn to mankind and unveiled the mysterious history of malaria in Taiwan a hundred years ago.

The fruit of cinchona tree. (provided by the six Tortoise Research Center of the Forest Research Institute) Malaria during the Japanese occupation was more terrible than the war.

At the end of the 19th century, the Japanese Empire, which had a covetous eye on Taiwan, ignored the Qing government and was not afraid of the aborigines in the mountainous areas. the only thing that feared most was the tropical miasma-malaria.

In 1874, Japan attacked various tribes in southern Taiwan, historically known as the "Peony Society incident." at that time, nearly 6,000 Japanese troops were killed, of which only more than 20 died, but 561 died of malaria. In 1895, Japan officially ruled Taiwan. eleven years later, Japan sent 75 people to Jiaxian and six turtles to mine camphor. in less than a year, as many as 40 people died of malaria. For the Japanese government, malaria is the greatest enemy of imperialism's entry into the colony.

Lin Wen-chih, an associate researcher at the six Turtles Research Center of the Council of Agriculture, said, "I remember a field survey in which I heard a 70-or 80-year-old man mention that he had four sisters when he was a child, but none of them grew up safely. Because they all got sick (malaria) and died."

Spreading out more than a dozen old publications and related books and papers of the Lin Experimental Institute, Lin Wen-chih recalled that the camphor industry of six turtles was also deeply affected by malaria. He said: "in the past, when the northern Hakkas came to six turtles to cut camphor brain, they would be asked to sign a contract by the Japanese, and the Japanese government was worried that these people would flee back to the north for fear of malaria."