If a tonic is something that “makes you feel stronger and happier”, my tonics come in the form of good wine, bad chocolate and an ageing whippet called Ernie. Recently, though, I’ve found myself craving the OG tonic – tonic water – which started life as a malaria treatment in the age of the British empire.
In the 17th century, Jesuit missionaries brought quinine, a bitter compound found in the bark of American cinchona trees, to Europe. They knew that indigenous people had been using it to treat fevers, and by the 1700s it was routinely being used as an antimalarial in tropical colonies. But there was a snag: quinine is unpalatable. To offset its impossible bitterness, it was combined with water and sugar to make a drink that enabled those stationed in the tropics to self-medicate every day. By the Victorian times, that self-medication had taken on a different aspect; not only had tonic water become fizzy, but it was routinely combined with gin for a drink now emblematic of the British Raj.
