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

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.

Source: Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences - October 24, 2016 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Klein, W., Pieters, T. Tags: Articles Source Type: research