Rebecca Laroche, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs
Chemical Heritage Foundation, Brown Bag Lecture
Time: 12:00 - 1:00 p.m.
Place: 6th Floor Conference Room, Chemical Heritage Foundation
Information: 215-873-8289 or bbl@chemheritage.org
Continuing the work of an exhibition at the Folger Shakespeare Library from last year, this presentation places Robert Boyle’s experiment “Of turning the Blew of Violets into a Red by Acid Salts, and to a Green by Alcalizate and the use of it for Investigating the Nature of Salts” in the context of the extensive archive of women’s medical receipts. In the experiment Boyle used the common medicine “Syrup of Violets” and its chemical sensitivity of turning color when introduced to acids and bases in developing an early pH indicator. When viewed next to the hundreds of relevant medical receipts, we discover that Boyle’s experiment builds on knowledge collectively held by women and men, including Alathea Talbot and Hugh Plat, in the making of the medicine.
Rebecca Laroche is professor of English at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. She has published articles on Shakespeare, early modern women’s writing, medical history, and ecofeminism. In 2009 her monograph Medical Authority and Englishwomen’s Herbal Texts, 1550–1650 appeared in Ashgate’s series Literary and Scientific Cultures of the Early Modern World. Last year she was the guest-curator of the exhibition “Beyond Home Remedy: Women, Medicine, and Science” at the Folger Shakespeare Library. The volume Ecofeminist Approaches to Early Modernity, which she coedited with Jennifer Munroe, came out with Palgrave Macmillan in November 2011. She is currently working on a monograph on the importance of collective plant knowledge in Shakespeare’s oeuvre.