Herbal Medicine and Herbal Commerce in a Developing Consumer Culture

Time: 4:30 p.m.

Place: 211 Dickinson Hall, Princeton University

Co-Sponsored by the Program in History of Science and the Program in Women and Gender Studies

Note: There is no pre-circulated paper for this talk.

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Abstract. Until the mid-twentieth century, all American doctors prescribed herbs and chemicals extracted from them; many plants had long histories of effective use in clinical practice, though only a few were as powerful as the synthetics that eventually supplanted them. Prescription coexisted with self-dosing and herbal commerce with backyard medicine; people used what would now be considered mainstream and alternative systems simultaneously. The trade in medicinal plants was based in a broader international commerce that sourced and traded a wide range of natural substances to manufacturers. As chemists isolated molecules from plant material and developed synthetic substitutes, the drug industry created standardized products; scientific progress was incorporated into a larger vision that celebrated the modernity of consumer products. Commercialized relationships to, and commodified perceptions of, nature and bodies were central to that vision.

Susan Strasser, Richards Professor of American History at the University of Delaware, is the author of Never Done: A History of American Housework, Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market, and Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash. Her work has been supported by fellowships from the Rockefeller and Guggenheim foundations, the German Historical Institute, the Harvard Business School, the American Council of Learned Societies, Radcliffe College’s Bunting Institute, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Cultures of Consumption Programme, Birkbeck College, University of London.