A New Social History of Pharmacy & Pharmaceuticals Festival
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The American Institute of the History of Pharmacy and the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Pharmacy were pleased to host the virtual festival, A New Social History of Pharmacy & Pharmaceuticals. The Festival was a free online streaming event that ran from Thursday, September 24 through Tuesday, September 29, 2020.
For questions or more information, please contact: aihp@aihp.org.
This five-day interdisciplinary Festival aimed to generate a discussion related to the under-explored social history of pharmacy and pharmaceuticals. We hope the contributed paper panels, books talks, and invited Festival talks stimulated/connected new scholarship and placed a spotlight on emerging trends in the studies of pharmaceuticals, drugs, and alcohol more broadly.
283 people attended at least one virtual session of the Festival, and the total aggregate Festival attendance across all 21 events was 1,150. Festival registrants represented 29 different countries across six continents. If you were unable to participate in person
Videos of all panels and presentations are available to watch below.
To help support future programming like the New Social History of Pharmacy & Pharmaceuticals Festival:
Author and Presenter:He Bian, Princeton University Abstract: In Know Your Remedies, He Bian presents a panoramic inquiry into China’s early modern cultural transformation through the lens of pharmacy. In the history of science and civilization in China, pharmacy—as a commercial enterprise and as a branch of classical medicine—resists easy characterization. While China’s long tradition of documenting the natural world through state-commissioned pharmacopeias, known as bencao, dwindled after the sixteenth century, the ubiquitous presence of Chinese pharmacy shops around the world today testifies to the vitality of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
Watch He Bian’s Book Talk:
Thursday, September 24, 2020 12:00 noon–1:00 PM: Panel 1—Contested Drug Markets
Panel Chair:Axel Helmstädter, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main Presenters:
Richard Del Rio, Florida State University: “Since When is Being a Drug Dealer a Bad Thing?: Race and the Criminalization of a Title in Early Twentieth Century America”
Joseph Gabriel, Florida State University: “Dangerous Markets: Risk and the Origins of ‘Ethical’ Pharmacy”
Mariana Broglia de Moura, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales: “Pharmacy’s Controls and Resistances During Brazilian Dictatorship”
Watch Panel 1—Contested Drug Markets:
Thursday, September 24, 2020 1:30–2:30 PM: Publishing Landscapes Roundtable Discussion
Host:Lucas Richert, University of Wisconsin–Madison and American Institute of the History of Pharmacy Presenters:
Toni Gunnison, University of Wisconsin Press
Kyla Madden, McGill-Queen’s University Press
Arnab Chakraborty, Medical History and Social History of Alcohol and Drugs
Watch the Publishing Landscapes Roundtable:
Thursday, September 24, 2020 3:00–4:00 PM: Panel 2—Drug Regulation, Knowledge, and Use
Panel Chair: John Parascandola, University of Maryland, College Park Presenters:
Nidia A. Olvera Hernández, Mora Institute (Mexico City): “The Mexican Pharmacopeia: The Inclusion of Psychoactive Natural Drugs in the Official Medicine (1846–1930)”
Christopher Blakely, University of California, Los Angeles: “Mkaumwa, Calumba and Miami Columbo: Slavery and Expropriated Pharmacology from the Swahili Coast to the Ohio Valley”
Michael Lewis, Christopher Newport University: “From Bar Rooms to Drug Stores to Dispensaries: The Evolutionary Response to the Liquor Problem in Athens Georgia, 1891”
Watch Panel 2—Drug Regulation, Knowledge, and Use:
“False Friends with Fair Faces” cartoon from 1916 NARD People’s Almanac.
Schedule of Events—Day 2 Friday, September 25, 2020
Friday, September 25, 2020 8:30–9:00 AM: Invited Festival Talk—”Formula Magistralis and the Battle between David and Goliath: The Dutch Pharmacist Versus the International Pharmaceutical Industry, 1865-2020″
Host:Jeremy Greene, Institute of the History of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University Presenter: Toine Pieters, Utrecht University
Watch Toine Pieters Festival Talk:
Friday, September 25, 2020 9:30–10:30 AM: Panel 3—Decolonizing Drugs from the South
Panel Chair: Maziyar Ghiabi, University of Exeter and SOAS, University of London Presenters:
Thembisa Waetjen, University of Johannesburg: “Apartheid’s War on Cannabis”
Athos Vieira, IESP/UERJ, “Cocaine and the Night: The Social Life of a Drug in Rio de Janeiro during Brazil’s First Republic, 1885–1920”
María-Clara Torres, Stony Brook University: “The Twilight and Revival of Coca: Northern Cauca, Colombia, 1950s–1980s”
Watch Panel 3—Decolonizing Drugs from the South:
Friday, September 25, 2020 11:00 AM–12:00 Noon: Panel 4—The Asian Cocaine Crisis: Pharmaceuticals, Consumers & Control in South and East Asia, c. 1900–1945
Panel Chair: Jim Mills, University of Strathclyde Presenters:
Eva Ward, University of Strathclyde: “Philippines Case Study”
Ian Baker, University of Strathclyde: “Myanmar Case Study”
Yun Huang, University of Strathclyde: “China Case Study”
Watch Panel 4—The Asian Cocaine Crisis:
Friday, September 25, 2020 1:00–2:00 PM: Panel 5—Trends in Pharmacy and Pharmacy Practice
Panel Chair:Gregory J. Higby, University of Wisconsin–Madison and American Institute of the History of Pharmacy Presenters:
Christian Brown & Ben Urick, University of North Carolina: “Capitation for Pharmacy Services: A Bold New Idea with a 40-Year History”
Michael Oldani, Concordia University Wisconsin: “The Im/Possibleness of Radical Deprescribing: Can Pharmacy Take Back the Script?”
Unfortunately, Johanne Collin, University of Montreal, who was going to give the presentation, “Gender and Pharmacy: Feminization and Transformation of the Canadian Pharmaceutical Profession since the 1950s” had to withdraw from this panel.
Watch Panel 5—Trends in Pharmacy and Pharmacy Practice:
Friday, September 25, 2020 2:30–3:30 PM: AIHP Early Career Roundtable Conversation
Panel Chair:Paula De Vos, San Diego State University Presenters:
Naomi Rendina, Case Western Reserve University (PhD 2020) and American Institute of the History of Pharmacy
Jacob Green, University of California, Los Angeles
Friday, September 25, 2020 3:45–4:15 PM: Invited Festival Talk—”Doing Drugs in Socialist East Germany”
Host:Lucas Richert, UW–Madison School of Pharmacy and AIHP Presenter:Markus Wahl, Institute for the History of Medicine, Stuttgart
Watch Markus Wahl Festival Talk:
“Age of Drugs” cartoon from Puck in 1900. The Saloon Keeper says, “The kind of drunkard I make is going out of style. I can’t begin to compete with this fellow.”
Schedule of Events—Day 3 Saturday, September 26, 2020
Saturday, September 26, 2020 8:00–9:00 AM: Panel 6—Shortages and Knowledge: Southeast Asian Perspectives
Panel Chair: Greg Bond, AIHP Presenters:
Malika Basu, Kalna College, University of Burdwan (West Bengal): “Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Education in Colonial India: Understanding the History of a Historical Science”
Nishanth Kunnukattil Shaji, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute: “Grappling with Morphine: A Local History of Painkiller Use in Kerala, India”
Unfortunately, Gani Jaelani, Universitas Padjadjaran, Bandung, who was going to give the presentation, “Testing the Chanted Water: Medical-Based Experiment on Traditional Pharmaceutical Knowledge,” had to withdraw from this panel.
Watch Panel 6—Shortages and Knowledge: Southeast Asian Perspectives:
Saturday, September 26, 2020 9:30–10:30 AM: Panel 7—Traditional and Early Modern Drug Knowledge
Edoardo Pierini, University of Geneva: “Different People, Different Addictions: The Recognition of Different Cultures of Intoxication in Early Modern Medicine”
Pedro Carlessi, University of São Paulo: “Neotraditional Medications: Ethnographic Contributions to the Conceptual Definition”
Julia Nurse, Wellcome Collection: “The Healing Power of Colour: Pigments as Potions in the Early Modern Period”
Watch Panel 7—Traditional and Early Modern Drug Knowledge:
Saturday, September 26, 2020 11:00 AM–12:00 Noon: Panel 8—Objects, Museums, and Names
Panel Chair: Briony Hudson, Independent Historian and Museum Curator Presenters:
Laura Robson-Mainwaring, The National Archives (UK): “‘Own Name,’ ‘No Name,’ and ‘the Plague of Fancy Names’ in the Pharmaceutical Market c. 1870–1920”
Violetta Barbashina, Independent Researcher: “‘…In Charity, for the Sake of Charity, and with Charity’: The Ointment Jar and the Virtue of Caritas in the Apothecary’s Practice”
Katarzyna Jarosz, University of Logistics and Transport in Wrocław: “The Development of Museums of Pharmacy in Post-Soviet Countries”
Author and Presenter:Paula De Vos, San Diego State University Abstract: In Compound Remedies, Paula De Vos examines the equipment, books, and remedies of colonial Mexico City’s Herrera pharmacy—natural substances with known healing powers that formed the basis for modern-day healing traditions and home remedies in Mexico. The book traces the evolution of the Galenic pharmaceutical tradition from its foundations in Ancient Greece to the physician-philosophers of the Islamic empires in the medieval Latin West and eventually through the Spanish Empire to Mexico, offering a global history of the transmission of these materials, knowledges, and techniques.
Watch Paula De Vos’s Book Talk:
Saturday, September 26, 2020 1:45–2:45 PM: Panel 9—Breakthroughs and Ethics
Panel Chair:Jacalyn Duffin, Queen’s University Presenters:
Cheryl Krasnick Warsh, Vancouver Island University: “Dr. Frances Kelsey and the Animals: A Case Study of the Evolution of Pharmacology in the 20th Century”
Unfortunately, Pierre-Marie David, Université de Montréal, who was going to give the presentation, “Une décennie de ruptures de stock en médicaments au Canada 2010–2020: causes et effets d’une situation de moins en moins exceptionnelle Le cas des anti—cancéreux” had to withdraw from this panel.
Unfortunately, Jordan Liz, San Jose State University, who was going to give the presentation, “Pharmacogenetics and the Politics of Race: Conceptualizing Health, Purity, and Miscegenation in the US and Brazil” had to withdraw from this panel.
Author and Presenter:Nancy Campbell, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Abstract: In OD, Nancy Campbell charts the emergence of naloxone as a technological fix for overdose and describes the remaking of overdose into an experience recognized as common, predictable, patterned—and, above all, preventable. Naloxone, which made resuscitation, rescue, and “reversal” after an overdose possible, became a tool for shifting law, policy, clinical medicine, and science toward harm reduction
Watch Nancy Campbell’s Book Talk:
1840s French cartoon by Cham lampoons profiteering pharmacists and doctors struggling to keep “la Grippe” (influenza) in Paris.
Schedule of Events—Day 4 Monday, September 28, 2020
Monday, September 28, 2020 9:00–10:00 AM: Panel 10—Medicine vs. Drugs: African Perspectives
Panel Chair: Greg Bond, AIHP Presenters:
Phumla Innocent Nkosi, University of Johannesburg: “A Picture of Dagga Policing in Mid-Century South Africa (1932–1960)”
Muhammad Wada, Bayero University (Kano, Nigeria): “Internal Outsiders, Domestic Politics and the Campaign against Drug Abuse in Kano State, Northern Nigeria, 1999–2015”
Unfortunately, Jo-Ansie Van Wyk, University of South Africa, who was going to give the presentation, “Radiopharmaceuticals in South Africa: From Apartheid’s Atoms to Ubuntu’s Isotopes?,”had to withdraw from this panel.
Watch Panel 10—Medicine vs. Drugs: African Perspectives:
Monday, September 28, 2020 10:45–11:15 AM: Invited Festival Talk—”Vaccines & Epidemics: Successes & Crises from Smallpox to COVID-19″
Host:Arthur Daemmrich, Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, Smithsonian Institution Presenter:John Grabenstein, Merck Vaccines (retired) and American Institute of the History of Pharmacy
Watch John Grabenstein Festival Talk:
Schedule of Events—Day 5 Tuesday, September 29, 2020
Author and Presenter:David Guba, Bard High School Early College Abstract: In Taming Cannabis, David Guba examines how nineteenth-century French authorities routinely blamed hashish consumption, especially among Muslim North Africans, for behavior deemed violent and threatening to the social order. This association of hashish with violence became the primary impetus for French pharmacists and physicians to tame the drug and deploy it in the homeopathic treatment of mental illness and epidemic disease during the 1830s and 1840s.
Watch David Guba’s Book Talk:
Tuesday, September 29, 2020 10:00–11:00 AM: Panel 11—Advertising Drugs and Pharmacy
Panel Chair:David Herzberg, University at Buffalo Presenters:
Erika Dyck, University of Saskatchewan, and Mat Savelli, McMaster University: “Methodological Challenges in the History of Drug Advertising”
Jacques Guyot, Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai (NY): “‘This Formidable Foe Now Has a Conqueror’: Patent Medicine Advertising in British Guiana, 1880-1920”
Wouter Klein, Freudenthal Institute, Utrecht University: “Newspaper Advertising and the Start of A Global Market for Drugs in the 18th Century”
Festival Hashtag: To create a conversation surrounding Festival events and presentations, attendees used the hashtag #PharmFest when posting about the Festival on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms.
Publishing
The papers presented at A New Social History of Pharmacy & Pharmaceuticals Festival will be considered for publication in joint special issues of Pharmacy in History, The Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, and the Canadian Bulletin of Medical History.
Instructions for manuscript submissions: Festival authors should submit manuscripts for publication consideration in Pharmacy in History,Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, and the Canadian Bulletin of Medical History. Papers should be between 8,000–10,000 words; use footnotes; follow Chicago citation style; and use the conventions of historical writing (ie., no ‘methods’ or ‘results’ sections). After papers are received, the editors of the journals will decide on the placements of each manuscript.
For those participants not yet ready to publish to a full manuscript, please consider sending your work to Points, the blog of the Alcohol and Drug History Society. For further information and guidance, please contact Emily Dufton, the managing editor, or reach out to any of us at AIHP.
Actively engaged in preserving the documents of pharmacy's past and developing materials for understanding the future.
Upcoming events of interest to pharmacists and historians of pharmacy, pharmaceuticals, medicines, science, and related fields. (Event information current when posted.):
