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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 3 January 2022 and 18 March 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Fuller2019 (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Jeremy Chi, Bellamila13, SammiMaloney, Jameshu1, 412timothy. I added to the history, use, and fluorescence sections. I also added a section on the negative effects of the quinine in tonic water. Fuller2019 (talk) 20:59, 9 February 2022 (UTC).[reply]

Quinine dosage

In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration limits tonic water quinine to 83 ppm (83 mg per litre if calculated by mass), which is one-half to one-quarter the concentration used in therapeutic tonic.

Although it's clear that the concentration is lower, presumably drinking 2-4 times as much tonic water would give a larger dose of quinine? It's also not clear how much would have to be drunk in order to achieve a therapeutic dose. Or is there something wrong with my reasoning? Thanks.   — Lee J Haywood 09:20, 2 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My pharmacy offers quinidine sulfate, a generic drug, in 5 gr capsules and 260 mg tablets. You'd need to drink about 3 litres to get close to the tablet's dosage. Bill C

Please, don't mistake quinine and quinidine. They are structuraly very closely akin (one being an enantiomer, optical isomer of another); quinidine is used mainly as an antiarrhytmic drug (to control hearth rhytm disorders, arrhytmias), while quinine is nowadays used as a mild muscle relaxant (better said antispasmodic, preventing muscle cramps) and as a second-line antimalaric, if the malaria Plasmodiae are resistant against 1st line antimalarials. NB: It should be also noted, that quinine is quite cumulative and should be strictly avoided by pregnant women, because in large doses, it can cause an abortion and isn't generally safe in pregnancy (possibly teratogenic.)--84.163.127.5 (talk) 05:04, 29 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

ppm is a mass ratio. I don't understand what the in parentheses comment adds here. 2620:0:E50:2009:9999:CE92:2E05:75B6 (talk) 18:34, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Attempting to get enough Quinine for malarial purposes in modern Tonic water would cause significant risk of Water intoxication. Don't try it. Gaijin42 (talk) 20:54, 23 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Strychnine

The german author Max Goldt reports that tonic water in the former GDR contained the toxin Strychnine instead of Quinine for it's lower price. Unfortunately I do not have any evidence for this claim apart from the essay "Wieder keine Harpunen, aber Gurke gegen Putenbuch".

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 85.183.209.68 (talk) 11:09, 15 May 2007 (UTC).[reply]

Hello. There seems to be a little bit of disagreement concerning how to best link to Cocktails. So, here is a explanation. It should be linked to the actual title of the article ( [[Cocktail]] ) to avoid a redirect from occurring. Redirects do not take much time for Wikipedia's web servers to process, but all such redirects are cumulative, and should be avoided if possible and when it makes sense to do so. Using lower case in capitalization of the first character ( [[cocktail]] ) is fine, though if the article's title is two or more words, capitalization might matter (test it and see). Wikipedia articles are generally singular, so the links should be, too ( [[Cocktail]] not [[Cocktails]], which only works because someone manually created a redirect page with the "s" in it). There is a neat trick that Wikipedia uses for linking with plural words: just add the "s" (or "es") outside, but touching, the link ( [[Cocktail]]s ). This prevents the redirect, but the link looks correct to the reader. If it is necessary to use completely different wording in the link, then go ahead and add the "s" there ( several good [[Port wine|Ports]] ). I hope this clears up some of the confusion. :-)

In summary, within this article, please leave the link as [[cocktail]]s for maximum efficiency and readability. Thanks --Willscrlt (Talk·Cntrb) 22:59, 15 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes this is an old issue but that's wrong. Per WP:NOTBROKEN and Wikipedia:Don't worry about performance, we're not supposed to 'fix' redirects for performance reasons. In this particular case neither [[cocktail]]s or [[cocktails]] have any real advantage and some may feel [[cocktail]]s is neater when editing and/or avoiding the redirect is neater to the end user, so if you want to change the redirect, I personally don't care. But you should not do it for performance reasons and in particular, if someone disagrees with you, justifying it for performance reasons is definitely an invalid reasoning. Note that these two messages along with 'fixing' the redirect twice has probably cost more performance then people following the redirect for the next 5 years or something. (One of the articles includes some calculations, the relates to using popups but I expect editing like this is similar and it's fairly unlikely more then say 20 people use that specific link every day) Nil Einne (talk) 12:59, 15 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Dangers of Tonic Water

The article mentions some of the dangers of tonic water, its degradation in sunlight to other compounds, its half-life, that its bitterness disappears after quinine has degraded, and that tonic water drinks should be discarded if no bitterness is detected. I performed a web search but was unable to find sources supporting this information. I was also unable to find any casual mention of it. Finally, I note that none of this information is in the article for quinine. The claims made in the article are very serious and should be verified before being published. For these reasons I will be removing the information from the article. --Ben James Ben 13:27, 23 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I also see that the section on quinine use in tonic water and alternatives such as quassia are also unsourced and possibly original research. I looked up the one reference listed, Academic Press Dictionary of Science and Technology, and found that it was merely a dictionary of scientific terms. It would not have the information mentioned in the article (beyond simple definitions). The other source is unpublished industry research. --Ben James Ben 14:00, 23 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

--The cited article on the use of tonic water for muscle cramp relief actually mentions no such claim in the article itself. The testing of quinine for muscle cramp relief was performed through direct dosing, not drinking tonic water, and the point the article made was that the OTC quinine medication was banned by the FDA for very hazardous side effects. Why would someone even put this in here? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.169.98.52 (talk) 03:02, 11 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Tonic water, as presently sold in mainstream brands, leaves me feeling quite ill, even though I like the taste of it. Alcoholics who drink G&T find the tonic causes serious problems well before the ethanol. It is well know for damaging the pancreas.220.244.141.232 (talk) 05:53, 15 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Brands

Below is the list of tonic water brands, removed from the main article. Having the list did not improve the article, and it was growing quite long.

Brands of tonic water:

--Ben James Ben 04:02, 9 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

tonic water

is there any medinice that you can't take with tonic water? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sharon5258 (talk • contribs) 20:27, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, many sorts. If a medicine says "Swallow whole" or "do not grind" or whatever, then dont put it in tonic water. Medicines will be very clear on this point. Though standard OTC stuff prolly wont cause issues. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.128.56.194 (talk) 15:14, 12 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

origin

Currently, the article says that tonic water was first sold in the 19th century and contained quinine from the beginning.

The drink gained its name from the medicinal effects of its bitter flavoring. The quinine was added to the drink as a prophylactic against malaria, since it was originally intended for consumption in tropical areas of South Asia and Africa, where that disease is endemic. The first commercial tonic water was produced in 1858. ... Medicinal tonic water originally contained only carbonated water and a large amount of quinine.

Other sources say that tonic water was sold in the 18th century, by the inventors of carbonated water (implying quinine has nothing to do with it):

Carbonated mineral water was a fashionable health fad. Priestley published a pamphlet on "Impregnating Water with Fixed Air" (1772), and sold the rights for his process to Jacob Schweppe in 1783, who developed a profitable business of "tonic water". [4]

However, the quinine article states that "tonic water" has existed since ancient times (i.e., that Peruvians used cinchona-bark tea to avoid shivering, and that it became popular in Europe in the 17th century after its anti-malarial side-effect was lucked upon during attempts to treat malarial symptoms, implying carbonation has nothing to do with it).

I'm not yet sure of the correct order of the events; I don't yet know:

  • when quinine was purified from chinchona bark? (but I'm guessing the motivation was to prevent spoilage during shipping, since a similar story applies to ascorbic "anti-scurvey"-ic acid)
  • whether carbonated drinking water was previously marketed without the added medicine?
  • at what point the name "tonic water" was applied (I'm guessing it was non-specific and might predate the carbonation, although maybe it or "soda water" was a genericised Schweppes brand)?

Either way, the article needs correcting. Cesiumfrog (talk) 09:21, 10 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The Quinine article also mentions that the Quechua people mixed Chinchona bark with sweetened water, and even makes reference to them originating the general concept of tonic water. I agree that the article needs to be amended to reflect its origins in indigenous Peruvian medicine.

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