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Sparkling water, sugar and quinine hydrochloride, a salt. Salt? That’s right, what differentiates tonic water from other soft drinks is precisely the salt, which gives that characteristic bitter taste of tonic. Quinine, which makes up the salt used in the drink, is one of the substances administered in the treatment of malaria, which leads many people to believe that the tonic can be ingested as a medicine. But this is a tremendous mistake, because, in addition to the fact that the amount of quinine in the tonic is too small to have pharmacological properties – the soft drink has 5 milligrams per liter, while in the treatment of malaria 1.5 grams are used per day -, the quinine of the remedy is presented in a different composition – in sulfate or hydrochloride, while in the tonic it is hydrochloride. Therefore, there are no restrictions on the consumption of the drink even by pregnant women – quinine sulfate has abortive properties. But it was not always so. In fact, the tonic emerged as a medicine and, precisely because of the invigorating property of mixing water with quinine, it received its name. The mixture appeared in India and became popular thanks to the English who lived there – India was an English colony – and they took the formula to the soda factories in their homeland. The drink was patented in London in 1858.