Sixty-Third Annual Report of the Government Cinchona Plantations and Factory in Bengal for the year 1924-25

has elicited a volume of opinion expressed in the press and elsewhere on the reasons for the present shortage and on policy necessary to increase the supply and to bring it within the reach of the millions. [...] It sees a solution or partial solution of the difficulties of supply in a modification of Medical opinion as regards the relative value of the different alkaloids in the bark in an alteration of the ratio now fixed for distributing profits between planters and manufacturers and in a reduction of costs by the substittion of a half purified febrifuge containing all the alkaloids for quinine. [...] There is on the one hand a vast impoverished malaria-stricken population in the world calling for the remedy and on the other the remedy at a price and in quantity not merely beyond its reach but beyond the full purchasing power of the richer nations of the world. [...] But the reasons may lie deeper in an as yet unexpressed belief that the production of quinine is already sufficient for the needs of those who can afford to pay a price sufficient for the economic stability of the industry and that the success of further production would depend on the dubious support obtainable from the philanthropic activities of Governments. [...] The net conclusion reached would seem to indicate that quinine at a price based on and of the order of the cost of its production is still well beyond the reach of the great malaria-stricken populations of the world.