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The Hidden History of a Famous Drug: Tracing the Medical and Public Acculturation of Peruvian Bark in Early Modern Western Europe (c. 1650-1720)

Journal of the history of medicine and allied sciences, 2016-10, Vol.71 (4), p.400-421 [Peer Reviewed Journal]

COPYRIGHT © 2016 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS ;Copyright © Oxford University Press and The Authors. ;The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com. ;ISSN: 0022-5045 ;EISSN: 1468-4373 ;DOI: 10.1093/jhmas/jrw004 ;PMID: 26895817

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  • Title:
    The Hidden History of a Famous Drug: Tracing the Medical and Public Acculturation of Peruvian Bark in Early Modern Western Europe (c. 1650-1720)
  • Author: KLEIN, WOUTER ; PIETERS, TOINE
  • Subjects: 1648-1789 ; Antimalarials - history ; Antimalarials - therapeutic use ; Cinchona - chemistry ; Cinchona Alkaloids - history ; Cinchona Alkaloids - therapeutic use ; Cinchona bark ; Europe ; Europe, Western ; History ; History of medicine and histology ; History, 17th Century ; History, 18th Century ; Humans ; Malaria ; Malaria - drug therapy ; Medicinal plants ; Phytotherapy - history ; Treatment
  • Is Part Of: Journal of the history of medicine and allied sciences, 2016-10, Vol.71 (4), p.400-421
  • Description: The history of the introduction of exotic therapeutic drugs in early modern Europe is usually rife with legend and obscurity and Peruvian bark is a case in point. The famous antimalarial drug entered the European medical market around 1640, yet it took decades before the bark was firmly established in pharmaceutical practice. This article argues that the history of Peruvian bark can only be understood as the interplay of its trajectories in science, commerce, and society. Modern research has mostly focused on the first of these, largely due to the abundance of medico-historical data. While appreciating these findings, this article proposes to integrate the medical trajectory in a richer narrative, by drawing particular attention to the acculturation of the bark in commerce and society. Although the evidence we have for these two trajectories is still sketchy and disproportionate, it can nevertheless help us to make sense of sources that have not yet been an obvious focus of research. Starting from an apparently isolated occurrence of the drug in a letter, this article focuses on Paris as the location where medical and public appreciation of the bark took shape, by exploring several contexts of knowledge circulation and medical practice there. These contexts provide a new window on the early circulation of knowledge of the bark, at a time when its eventual acceptance was by no means certain.
  • Publisher: England: Oxford University Press
  • Language: English
  • Identifier: ISSN: 0022-5045
    EISSN: 1468-4373
    DOI: 10.1093/jhmas/jrw004
    PMID: 26895817
  • Source: MEDLINE
    Alma/SFX Local Collection
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