Definition of "quinine"

The alkali of yellow bark may be distinguished from cinchonine by the name of quinine.

1821, The Quarterly Journal of Science, Literature, and the Arts, volume 10

The quinine, being more potent than cinchonine, is generally preferred.

1828, The Medical Guide, Quinine, cinchonine, and sulphate of quinine

In spite of quinine, the men sickened day by day. Many of them, fine, strong, active fellows, who had never known what a day's sickness meant, went down before the malarious mist that gathered in the jungles.

1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 102

He hadn't the faintest idea what to do with a cold in the head, he just took quinine and continued to blow his nose.

1922, Michael Arlen, “2/9/1”, in “Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days, London: W[illiam] Collins Sons & Co.

“Die? Yes, they’ll all die—all these men. No bandages, no salves, no quinine, no chloroform. Oh, God, for some morphia! Just a little morphia for the worst ones. Just a little chloroform. God damn the Yankees! God damn the Yankees!”

1936 June 30, Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; republished New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, 1944, part IV, page 363

I propose that the availability of increased stores of quinine under British control had a similar facilitating effect on the British colonial expansion into Africa in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

1979, Lucile H. Brockway, Science and Colonial Expansion, New Haven, Conn., London: Yale University Press, published 2002, page 127

So far, the daily dose of quinine had been bitter and very unpalatable. […] To make the medicine go down more easily, colonialists occasionally mixed the powder with sugar, water and gin.

2014, Olivia Williams, “Gin is the Tonic”, in Gin Glorious Gin: How Mother’s Ruin Became the Spirit of London, London: Headline Publishing Group, page 163