quinine, for malaria. ramble ramble ramble - in the seventies I worked in London in an insurance office, with a very yellow-skinned guy who was often out sick. turned out he'd been on the Burma railway during the war, and got malaria. he had frequent recurrances(sp?) of it. even further OT, malaria is one of the reasons that sickle cell anaemia is so prevalent in Africans from a belt across the middle of Africa, and their descendants in America. I THINK that what happens is that sickle cell anaemia causes thickening of the outer surface of the platelets in the blood, so the malaria bug can't penetrate. So people with sickle cell anaemia had a better chance of survival in those areas where malaria was prevalent. I don't know anything that's actually useful in day-to-day life, but have a large store of such useless knowledge :^( snore........