You Know Who

As a child I don’t think I counted my blessings; I did curse curse my afflictions, like wet Sunday afternoons at prep school.

Now I do count my blessings and high on the list is not having read Sociology. “Back in the day” – an expression I don’t care for – it was “all the rage” – ditto – and like Classics and Theology an easy course to get onto. I read Anthropology – not so hard either – and that had a whiff of Sociology but I did not read about a great, late 19th century, French sociologist, Émile Durkheim. He is credited with creating the concept of collective consciousness, something as woolly as a sociologist’s jumper but useful nevertheless.

You don’t need to read Sociology to know what collective consciousness means; it’s what everybody knows; important things like the efficacy of quinine for treating malaria. Only now modern medical opinion deems the toxicity of quinine to outweigh its medicinal benefits. Its content in tonic water in Europe is restricted to 100 parts per million and in the US (strangely cautious in some areas but wildly liberal in others) 83 ppm. We also all know quinine was used in tonic water in India as a preventative for malaria made more palatable by the addition of gin.

Quinine is made from the bark of the cinchona plant, native to the Andes in Bolivia and Peru. It was largely at the initiative of Sir Clements Markham that it was introduced to India circa 1860. Sir Clements led a full life and his expeditions to Peru are just a footnote in his interesting and adventurous life. However, it is thanks to the government of Peru that his bronze bust is displayed beside the old main entrance to the Royal Geographical Society on Kensington Gore.