Merchants of Medicines: The Commerce and Coercion of Health in Britain’s Long Eighteenth Century - Hardcover

Dorner, Zachary

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 022670680X ISBN 13: 9780226706801

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2020

Synopsis

The period from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth century—the so-called long eighteenth century of English history—was a time of profound global change, marked by the expansion of intercontinental empires, long-distance trade, and human enslavement. It was also the moment when medicines, previously produced locally and in small batches, became global products. As greater numbers of British subjects struggled to survive overseas, more medicines than ever were manufactured and exported to help them. Most historical accounts, however, obscure the medicine trade’s dependence on slave labor, plantation agriculture, and colonial warfare.

In Merchants of Medicines, Zachary 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.

About this title

About the Author

Zachary Dorner is an Assistant Clinical Professor in the University Honors Program at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 022670680X
• ISBN 13: 9780226706801
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 280