Reminds me of how the British stationed in 19th century India used to use quinine to ward off malaria. Apparently in its raw form it's incredibly bitter so the soldiers started to mix it with water and sugar and voila - tonic water was born.

Some bright spark added gin and the rest is history...

Close, but it's really the gin and tonic that was born out of getting sailors to drink quinine in the tonic water:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gin_and_tonic#History

And yes, having taken quinine pills for malaria it is very bitter and unpleasant.

It’s bitter because it’s actually quite poisonous, and your tongue is warming you about that. Dave Arnold’s excellent Liquid Intelligence has a section on making your own tonic with pure quinine powder, and he admonishes the reader to mix with a blender, because an ubcombined chunk of pure quinine could actually hospitalize someone if it ended up in their drink.

Tonic water made with actual quinine rather than the synthetic stuff is great. It seems preferable to the pills, though I suspect you’d have to drink a lot.

Edit: The WHO suggest treating severe drug resistant malaria with 500mg of quinine orally every 8 hours. A 1 litre bottle of tonic water should not contain more than 83mg according to the FDA. Drinking 6 litres every 8 hours is a bit much. https://apps.who.int/medicinedocs/en/d/Jh2922e/2.5.2.html#Jh...

https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFR...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonic_water

I prefer my mixed drinks with tonic over any other mixer. As you note, off the shelf tonic has very little quinine nowadays. When I had to take the pills I was headed to an area with a known malaria risk.

In general the Royal Navy added lime juice to whichever alcohol they issued to sailors as daily rations. Usually it was rum but could be other booze if the rum ran out. Officers would watch to ensure each man drank his dose instead of trading it away.

>>A cocktail that I quite enjoy is the gimlet [0], it apparently was possibly invented to encourage sailors to drink lime juice.

...things people do to make sure they don't get scurvy ;)

But it's often made with Rose's Lime Juice, a concentrate, which AFAICT contains no vitamin C.