1930年至1960年間，臺灣的金雞納樹栽植歷經了一段由盛轉衰的過程，原因常被理解為臺灣抗瘧需求的消失，或奎寧被其他合成藥物取代。然而，從其在臺生產的時間點來看，它在醫學證明其缺陷時大規模地發展，在戰後初期使用合成抗瘧藥的西方主流中極力復興，並在1950年撲瘧計畫尚未正式啟動時宣告中止，顯然醫學論述與本地醫療需求並非主要或唯一因素。本文試圖跳脫上述過於簡化的歷史解釋，借用「物的生命史」之敍事角度探討金雞納與奎寧從商品到非商品的生命歷程，並藉追溯此物生產及消費的時空特徵觀察其意義如何被建構。簡言之，隨著政治疆域的空間想像從大東亞規模縮小到大陸疆界，再限縮到島嶼尺寸，銘刻在此物之上的意義不斷轉化，價值也一再被重新定義。它最終的去商品化顯示，失去了區別標示東方與西方、中國人與外人或臺灣與中國的著力點，奎寧便變得與其他的抗瘧藥沒有差別。另一方面，此物成為一種政治符號，促使其生產與消費空間的分離。雖然大部分的奎寧都被送到異地，其複雜而獨特的工序仍然影響了在地的社會與經濟，它也以最原始的樹皮草藥形式，進入地方居民的生活。

Since the early 1930s, cinchona was widely cultivated in colonial Taiwan as a valuable medicine for treating malaria; thirty years later, however, it became just an ordinary wood as its commodity value was lost. To understand the processes of cinchona and quinine’s commoditization and de-commoditization, previous studies have simply connected their production with the local demand for malaria treatment, and the stop of production with the global progress in the manufacture of synthetic drugs. But these accounts ignored that cinchona’s large-scale cultivation in Taiwan in fact began when synthetic anti-malaria drugs were already developed and the limitations of quinine demonstrated, and ended while malaria was still a serious problem in the island. This article thus aims to reconsider the “biography” of cinchona and quinine from 1930 to 1960 by borrowing the concept from material culture studies. Examining the trajectories from production to consumption in different temporal and spatial contexts helps us to understand how their meaning and value were constructed: they were viewed as a weapon of the Japanese Empire from 1930 to 1945, a hope for saving Chinese people’s weakness between 1945 and 1949, and a specific symbolic resource for Taiwan to reconquer the mainland after 1949. Not until the 1960s, when the government shifted its emphasis from the military to the political, did cinchona and quinine thoroughly lose their status. In other words, their meaning and value, as well as the boundaries of commoditization, were redefined again and again in the changing political situation in Taiwan.

奎寧；金雞納；物的意義與價值建構；物的社會生命；物質文化史

Quinine; Cinchona; Construction of Meaning and Value; Social Life of Things; Material Culture