Hello Steem people 😀!!!

How are you today? I am sure that everything goes well on your side! So today I have a very interesting story for all of you! 😊 !!!

I don't know how many of you love this drink but I know for a fact that very few know, what I am about to tell!

It is about the color of Bombay Gin and why it is Blue!!!! Have you ever wondered really?  And why is called BOMBAY SAPPHIRE?

It is Gin and it should be colorless really!!! I am certain, everytime you see it, you think it's just a mixture of blends that have this beautiful color as a result just by accident!

Well the answer is far from it really! The answer it could be the scenario of a film with an exotic location, set back in India of the late 19th Century!

WHERE IT ALL STARTED

In order to do that I will have to take you on a trip to the Exotic land of India of 19th Century!!!

Somewhere at some British barracks close to a river , the heat is unbearable and those soldiers of the British Army, those boys with the pale faces and the white legs, have some trouble coping with this hot, humid, insufferable weather!!!

The humidity, the food that causes them digistive problems and the mosquitoes!!! Those deadly mosquitoes that with their bites that infect them with the deadly Malaria!!!

MALARIA OR ELONOSIA

Malaria as it is world known, is a mosquito-borne infectious disease that is affecting not just humans but animals as well!! The name that was given to it, means Bad Air in Medieval Italian: Mal Aria, since back then they thought that it was airborne!

The Greeks were the first to realise that it was created next to Marshy areas -that's the actual meaning of the word Elonosia in Greek language- and so that kind of environment would be responible for the creation and contamination from the disease!

MALARIA HAS BEEN HERE FOR QUITE SOME TIME

Hippocrates described periodic fevers, labelling them tertian, quartan, subtertian and quotidian. The Roman Columella associated the disease with insects from swamps.

Malaria may have contributed to the decline of the Roman Empire some say, and was so pervasive in Rome that it was known as the "Roman Fever"!

But in the recent years Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran made the first significant advance in 1880 when he identified what was causing the disease and he also won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1907!

The first effective treatment for malaria came from the bark of cinchona tree, which contains Quinine. This tree grows on the slopes of the Andes, mainly in Peru.

Its effectiveness against malaria was found and the Jesuits introduced the treatment to Europe around 1640!

BACK IN INDIA IN THE LATE 19th CENTURY

British doctor Ronald Ross also received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine 1902 for his work on malaria.

He was one of the doctors that introduced Quinine to the British soldiers in India as a medication!

Initially they were drinking it mixed with Tonic but it was very bitter! The colourful effect was amazing though!!!!!!!!!!!!

Later, someone had the idea to mix it with Gin, since it was a drink that British soldiers loved in india during the British Raj and.... VOILA!!! Gin with the color of the precious stone of Sapphire and since it was first created in the barracks of Bombay, it took the name from this colourful and vibrant city of India!!!