How and when did 'medicine' become 'global'? We certainly live today in a world in which medical beliefs, substances and systems of knowledge cross borders and permeate cultures very different from the ones in which they originated. But what conditions have fostered this pluralism, and what forces enable or restrict the ability of patients and consumers to access treatments and healing expertise from around the globe? This week we will explore migration, 'exploration' and empire as factors in the creation of medical cultures.

Questions:

• How did European colonialism abet the discovery of new medicines in the Modern/Early Modern Eras?
• How did these ‘discoveries’ change domestic or colonial medical practice?
• Compare and contrast Modern and Early Modern processes of medicinal discovery.

 

Required Readings:

Roberta Bivins, 'Conclusion', Alternative Medicine? A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 171-200. (Near-Contemporary)

Abena Dove Osseo-Asare, ‘Bioprospecting and Resistance: Transforming Poisons Arrows into Strophantin Pills in Colonial Gold Coast, 1855 – 1922,’ Social History of Medicine, 21.2 (2008): 269 – 290. (Modern)

Patrick Wallis, 'Exotic Drugs and English Medicine: England's Drug Trade, c. 1550 - c. 1800,' Social History of Medicine, 25, no. 1 (2011): 20-46. (Early Modern)

Background Readings:

Early Modern:

Benjamin Breen, ‘Empires on Drugs: Pharmaceutical Go-Between and the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance,’ in Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Entangled Empires: The Anglo-Iberian Atlantic, 1500 – 1830 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018): 63 – 82.

Pratik Chakrabarti, Materials and Medicine: Trade, Conquest, and Therapeutics in the eighteenth century (Manchester University Press, 2010).

Harold J. Cook & Timothy Walker, ’Circulation of Medicine in the Early Modern Atlantic World,’ Social History of Medicine, 26.3 (2013): 337 – 351.

Matthew J. Crawfurd, ‘A Cure for Empire? Chinchona Bark and the Politics of Knowledge in the Eighteenth-Century Spanish Empire,’ The Eighteenth Century, 59.2 (2018): 217 – 236.

Clare Griffin, ‘Russia and the Medical Drug Trade in the Seventeenth Century,’ Social History of Medicine, 31.1 (2018): 2 – 23.

Stefanie Gänger, ‘World Trade in Medicinal Plants from Spanish America, 1717–1815,’ Medical History, 59.1 (2014): 44 – 62.

Christopher M. Parson, ‘The Natural History of Colonial Science: Joseph-François Lafitau’s Discovery of Ginseng and its Afterlives,’ The William and Mary Quarterly, 73.1 (2016): 37 – 72.

Londa Schiebinger, Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World (Harvard University Press, 2004).

Londa Schiebinger, ‘Prospecting for Drugs: European Naturalists in the West Indies,’ in Londa Schiebinger and Claudia Swan (eds), Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern World (University of Pennsylvania Press: 2005): 119 – 134.

Patrick Wallis, ‘Exotics Drugs and English Medicine: England’s Drug Trade, c. 1550 – c. 1800,’ Social History of Medicine, 25.1 (2012): 20 – 46.

Timothy D. Walker, ‘The Medicines Trade in the Portuguese Atlantic World: Acquisition and Dissemination of Healing Knowledge from Brazil (c. 1580 – 1800),’ Social History of Medicine, 26.3 (2013): 403 – 431.

Anna E. Winterbottom, ‘Of the China Root: A Case Study of the Early Modern Circulation of Materia Medica,’ Social History of Medicine, 28.1 (2015): 22 – 44.

 

Modern:

Stuart Anderson, ‘Pharmacy and Empire: The "British Pharmacopoeia" as an Instrument of Imperialism, 1864 to 1932,’ Pharmacy in History, 52.3/4 (2010): 112-121

William Beinart, ‘From Elephant’s Foot … to Cortisone’: Boots Pure Drug Company and Dioscorea Sylvatica in South Africa, c. 1950 – 1963,’ South African Historical Journal, 71.4 (2019): 644 – 675.

Roberta Bivins, Alternative Medicine? A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

Ryan Johnson, ‘Tabloid Brand Medicine Chests: Selling Health and Hygiene for the British Tropical Colonies,’ Science as Culture, 17.3 (2008): 249 – 268.

Markku Hokkanen, ‘Imperial Networks, Colonial Bioprospecting, and Burroughs Wellcome & Co.: The Case of Strophanthus Kombe from Malawi (1859 – 1915),’ Social History of Medicine, 25.3 (2012): 589 – 607.

James H. Mills, Cannabis Britannica: Empire, Trade, and Prohibition, 1800 – 1928 (OUP, 2003): 17 – 47.

Laurence Monnais and Noémi Tousignant, ‘The Values of Versatility: Pharmacists, Places, and Place in the French (Post)Colonial World,’ Comparative Studies in Society and History, 58.2 (2016): 432 – 462.

Tom C. McCaskie, “The Art or Mystery of Physick”: Asante Medicinal Plants and the Western Ordering of Botanical Knowledge,’ History in Africa, 44 (2017): 27 – 62.

Hans Pols, ‘European Physicians and Botanists, Indigenous Herbal Medicine in the Dutch East Indies, and Colonial Networks of Mediation,’ East Asian science, Technology and Society, 3.2 (2009): 173 – 208.

Timothy Yang, A Medicated Empire: The Pharmaceutical Industry and Modern Japan (Cornell University Press: 2021): 185 – 207.