Timothy C. Winegard

“Blood type O seems to be the vintage of choice over types A and B or their blend. People with blood type O get bitten twice as often as those with type A, with type B falling somewhere in between.”
― Timothy C. Winegard, The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator

“By and large, until the eventual painstaking mass export production of Indonesian-grown cinchona quinine by the Dutch, beginning in the 1850s, the mosquito kept Europeans out of Africa. The cinchona tree is persnickety about altitude, temperature, and soil type. It will grow only in very strict and specific environments. This limited, expensive supply opened the door for numerous quinine shams and impostors to flood the market, feigning to meet the massive demand. William H. McNeill reiterates that “the penetration of the interior of Africa that became a prominent feature of Europe’s expansion in the second half of the nineteenth century would have been impossible without quinine from the Dutch plantations.” Armed with this transplanted quinine, the imperial European scramble for Africa began in 1880 and straddled the decades of the First World War. Quinine was not a panacea, however, as yellow fever continued to stalk Europeans who dared enter the wilds of Africa.”
― Timothy C. Winegard, The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator