Dr. Zachary Dorner Receives 2024 Kremers Award

AIHP is pleased to announce that the 2022 Edward Kremers Award has been awarded to Zachary Dorner, Ph.D. for his book, Merchants of Medicines The Commerce and Coercion of Health in Britain’s Long Eighteenth Century (University of Chicago Press, 2020).

AIHP awards the Edward Kremers Award biennially to recognize the author(s) of a book, or a series of related articles, published within the past five years, in the field of the history of pharmacy and pharmaceuticals, that exhibits high standards of scholarship, superior quality, and distinguished merit. The Edward Kremers Award honors Professor Edward Kremers (1865-1941), a pioneer of pharmacy education in the United States, distinguished historian of pharmacy, and one of AIHP’s founders.

Dr. Dorner is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Maryland. A panel of historians of pharmacy and medicine, led by AIHP’s Historical Director, Lucas Richert, PhD, selected Dr. Dorner’s book from nine nominations received for this year’s Kremers Award.

In Merchants of Medicines, Dorner follows the earliest industrial pharmaceuticals from their manufacture in the United Kingdom, across trade routes, and to the edges of empire, telling a story of what medicines were, what they did, and what they meant. He brings to life business, medical, and government records to evoke a vibrant early modern world of London laboratories, Caribbean estates, South Asian factories, New England timber camps, and ships at sea. In these settings, medicines were produced, distributed, and consumed in new ways to help confront challenges of distance, labor, and authority in colonial territories. Merchants of Medicines offers a new history of economic and medical development across early America, Britain, and South Asia, revealing the unsettlingly close ties among medicine, finance, warfare, and slavery that changed people’s expectations of their health and their bodies.

AIHP established the Edward Kremers Award in 1962. The Award was originally conferred upon a citizen of the United States for a scholarly publication, or a single series of interrelated publications, appearing anywhere in the world and pertaining primarily to historical or historico-social aspects of pharmacy. AIHP’s Board of Directors in 2020 eliminated the citizenship restriction, and the award is now conferred without regard to citizenship. Click here for listing of prior winners of the Edward Kremers Award. Thank you to all nominators and nominees for the 2024 Award.