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John Eliot Howard (1807-1883), quinologist, was born on 11 December 1807 at Plaistow, Essex, the youngest of three children of Luke Howard (1772-1864), meteorologist and chemist, and his wife, Mariabella, née Eliot (1769-1852). Both parents were members of the Society of Friends. With the exception of two years at Josiah Forster's school, Howard was educated at home. Apprenticed to his father's chemical business at Stratford in 1823, he was made a partner of the firm in 1828. In 1830 he married Maria (1807-1892), daughter of William D. Crewdson of Kendal. The couple moved into a substantial house in Tottenham, Middlesex, where they had five daughters and four sons.
As early as 1827 Howard showed interest in what would prove to be his life's work: the extraction of the anti-malaria drug quinine from the bark of the Cinchona (cinchonaceae) genus of South American tree. His first paper, a report on the collection of cinchona in the British Museum made by the Spanish botanist José Pavón (1754-1840), was published in 1852. In the following year Howard joined the Pharmaceutical Society, and in 1857 the Linnean Society. In 1858 he purchased Pavón's manuscript 'Nueva Quinologia' and his specimens of cinchona. Howard employed a botanical artist and published the well-received Illustrations of the 'Nueva Quinologia' of Pavon and Observations on the Barks Described in 1862. Howard's second major work, The Quinology of the East Indian Plantations (1869-76), was the result of his examination of the bark of all the forms of cinchona introduced into India from the Andes by Clements Markham, Richard Spruce, and Robert Mackenzie Cross. For this Howard received the thanks of her majesty's government in 1873. In 1874 his citation for election as a fellow of the Royal Society recognized the importance of his work: 'the name of Mr Howard is inseparably connected with his lifelong investigation respecting the identification and chemistry of the cinchona' (Kirkwood and Lloyd, 1).
Howard took considerable interest in gardening, and especially in hybridization as bearing upon cultivated cinchonas, and he was the author of numerous scientific papers, chiefly on quinine. He also gave addresses on both science and revelation at the Victoria Institute, of which he was a vice-president. Howard and his wife were both deeply religious and had been raised as Quakers. In 1836 they resigned from the Society of Friends and became Baptists. Howard published several religious tracts and was instrumental in establishing the Brook Street Chapel, Tottenham. He died at his house, Lord's Meade, Tottenham, on 22 November 1883, and was buried in Tottenham cemetery. The genus Howardia of the Cinchonaceae was posthumously dedicated to him.