Lecturer: Michael Bycroft
Drug testing seems to be a quintessentially modern enterprise, something we associate with randomised controlled trials and multinational pharmaceutical companies. But the question of how to determine the efficacy of a drug -- and of any cure for that matter -- is an ancient one. This seminar uses drug testing as a window onto the variengated world of early modern medicine. Drugs were tested in a wide range of settings, from courts to kitchens to laboratories. These tests were tied up with wider changes in early modern medicine, from the rise of the 'chemical philosophy' to the influx of new medicines from the Americas and the Indian Ocean.
Discussion/Essay Questions:
1. Who tested drugs in early modern Europe?
2. What does drugs testing tell us about the nature of early modern medicine, as opposed to ancient medicine or modern medicine?
Required Readings:
Alisha Rankin, 'On Anecdotes and Antidotes: Poison Trials in Sixteenth-Century Europe,' Bulletin of the History of Medicine 91 (2017), 274-302
Elaine Leong, Medicine, Science and the Household in Early Modern England (Chicago, 2018), 'Chapter 4: Recipe Trials in the Early Modern Household'
Further Readings:
Barrera-Osorio, Antonio, "Knowledge and Empiricism in the Sixteenth-Century Spanish Atlantic World", in Daniela Bleichmar, Paula De Vos, Kristin Huffine, and Kevin Sheehan (eds), Science in the Spanish and Portuguese Empires, 1500-1800 (Stanford University Press, 2008), 219-232 [ebook] - this chapter is about more than medicine, but it's worth reading the whole thing for the context - look out for the medical examples, which are balsam and mechoacan.
Brockliss, Laurence W. ‘The Development of the Spa in Seventeenth-Century France.’ Medical History: Supplement, no. 10 (1990): 23–47.
Bycroft, Michael. ‘Iatrochemistry and the Evaluation of Mineral Waters in France, 1600-1750’. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 91, no. 2 (25 July 2017): 303–30.
Debus, Allen George. The French Paracelsians: The Chemical Challenge to Medical and Scientific Tradition in Early Modern France. Cambridge University Press, 2002.
DiMeo, Michelle. Lady Ranelagh: The Incomparable Life of Robert Boyle’s Sister. University of Chicago Press, 2021.
Mcvaugh, Michael. ‘Determining a Drug’s Properties: Medieval Experimental Protocols’. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 91, no. 2 (25 July 2017): 183–209.
Pugliano, Valentina. ‘Pharmacy, Testing, and the Language of Truth in Renaissance Italy’. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 91, no. 2 (25 July 2017): 233–73.
Rankin, Alisha. The Poison Trials: Wonder Drugs, Experiment, and the Battle for Authority in Renaissance Science. University of Chicago Press, 2021.
Rivest, Justin. ‘Testing Drugs and Attesting Cures: Pharmaceutical Monopolies and Military Contracts in Eighteenth-Century France’. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 91, no. 2 (25 July 2017): 362–90.
Schiebinger, Londa. Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2021.
Spary, Emma. Eating the Enlightenment: Food and the Sciences in Paris. University of Chicago Press, 2012. See Chapter 2 on coffee.
Yıldırım, Duygu. ‘Coffee: Of Melancholic Turkish Bodies and Sensory Experiences’. In Natural Things in Early Modern Worlds, edited by Mackenzie Cooley, Anna Toledano, and Duygu Yıldırım. Routledge, 2023.
