It has a very bitter taste.
Quinine is used in malaria treatment. Quinine tablets contain anywhere from 200 to 350 mg of Quinine. A sample treatment is 2 x 300 mg Quinine tablets every 8 hours for 7 days.
Quinine is also used to prevent night-time leg cramp in bed.
It is also used in flavouring Tonic Water. 8 oz (240 ml) of Tonic Water has about 27 mg of Quinine in it.
Quinine is also present in Bitter Melons.
History Notes
The British in India used Quinine as a malaria cure. Quinine will destroy the parasites, but not completely, so treatment had to continue. So, to get past the taste, they’d mix it in with their favourite tipple — gin. They got to like the taste combination, and eventually Tonic Water was created, which has Quinine in it.
Quinine was supplanted for a few decades in the mid-1900s by synthetic drugs, until malaria parasites became resistant to them . Now Quinine is being used as a treatment again in some parts of the world.