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Article: No 46: Schweppes Tonic Water.
- Article from:
- Sunday Business (London, England)
- Article date:
- September 10, 2000
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 Sunday Business Publishing. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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SCHWEPPES was the world's first soft drinks company. In 1783 Jacob Schweppe, a Swiss citizen living in London, started selling a stylised mineral water, to which the company he founded added a lemonade product in 1835. Tonic water, for which the company became most famous, did not arrive until 1870 and a decade later was being sold around the world.
This latter fact is very important, because of the key ingredient in tonic water - quinine. By the latter half of the 19th century the colonial presence in India was at its peak, which presented problems for the tender nobility running things there - not least of which was mosquitos and malaria. Quinine is ...