Introduction
Over the course of the seventeenth and into the eighteenth centuries, European naturalists increasingly travelled to tropical colonies around the world to find and collect new plants and medicinal simples. This global bioprospecting movement facilitated the rise of a more modern medical apparatus, which was facilitated by the routes of trade and global exchange that linked colonial peripheries with their European metropoles. Traveling around the world to discover strange new flora and fauna proved costly and difficult, however, so naturalists soon sought to capture the pieces of exotic nature they encountered and transplant those valuable specimens back to Europe. Though these emerging medical nexuses enabled the establishment of a global pharmacopoeia, this uptick in trans-oceanic exchange also facilitated the spread of strange diseases, which traveled along with newfound medicaments...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Bertucci P (2017) Artisanal enlightenment: science and the mechanical arts in old regime France. Yale University Press, New Haven
Breton R (1666) Dictionnaire François-Caraïbe: composé par le R.P. Raymond Breton, religieux de l’ordre des Frères Prescheurs, l’un des quatre premiers François millionaires apostolique en l’îsle de la Gardeloupe et autres circonnoisines de l’Amérique, Auxere. Paris, France
Buchholz L (2018) Rethinking the center-periphery model: dimensions and temporalities of macro-structure in a global field of cultural production. Poetics 71:18–32
Cooley M (2018) Animal empires: the perfection of nature between Europe and the Americas, 1492–1630. PhD dissertation, Stanford University
Crawford MJ (2016) The Andean wonder drug: Cinchona Bark and imperial science in the Spanish Atlantic, 1630–1800. University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh
De Paz Pérez PL, Hernández Padrón CE (1999) Plantas medicinales o útiles en la flora Canaria. Francisco Lemus, La Laguna (Canary Islands)
Findlen P (2006) Natural history. In: The Cambridge history if science, vol 3. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp 435–468
Gómez P (2017) The experiential Caribbean: creating knowledge and healing in the early modern Atlantic. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill
Grainger J (1764) An essay on the more common West-India diseases; and the remedies which that country itself produces. T. Becket and P.A. De Hondt, London
Harris SJ (2006) Networks of travel, correspondence, and exchange. In: The Cambridge history of science, vol 3. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp 341–362
Heintzman K (2018) A cabinet for the ordinary: domesticating veterinary education, 1766–1799. Br J Hist Sci 51:239–260
Kiple K (1984) The Caribbean slave: a biological history. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK
McNeill JR (2010) Mosquito empires: ecology and war in the Greater Caribbean, 1620–1914. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK
Nabhan GP (2014) Cumin, camels, and caravans: a spice odyssey. University of California Press, Berkeley
Newson LA, Minchin S (2007) From capture to sale: the Portuguese slave trade to Spanish South America in the early seventeenth century. Brill, Leiden
Pagden A (2009) The peopling of the New World: ethnos, race and empire in the early-modern world. In: The origins of racism in the west. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp 292–312
Paine J (2015) The sea and civilization: a maritime history of the world. Vintage Books, New York
Schiebinger L (2007) Plants and empire: colonial bioprospecting in the Atlantic world. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA
Schiebinger L (2017) Secret cures of slaves: people, plants, and medicine in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world. Stanford University Press, Stanford
Seijas T (2014) Asian slaves in colonial Mexico: from Chinos to Indians. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK
Sloane H (1707) A voyage to the islands of Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica. Printed by BM for the author, London
Smith JEH (2015) Nature, human nature, and human difference: race in early modern philosophy. Princeton University Press, Princeton
Spary E (2000) Utopia’s garden: French natural history from old regime to revolution. University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Subrahmanyam S (2005) Explorations in connected history: from the Tagus to the Ganges. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Subrahmanyam S (2011) Three ways to be alien: travails & encounters in the early modern world. University Press of New England (Brandeis University Press), Lebanon
Tellez, Francisco Guerra Maria del Carmen Sanchez (ed) (1984) El libro de medicinas caseras de Fr, Blas de la Madre de Dios: Manila, vol 1611. Instituto de Cooperación Iboamericana, Madrid
Tinguely F (ed) (2008) Un libertin dans l’Inde moghole: Les voyages de François Bernier (1656–1669). Chandeigne, Paris
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Anderson, T.C. (2020). Medicine and Travel in the Colonies (1600–1750). In: Jalobeanu, D., Wolfe, C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20791-9_615-2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20791-9_615-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-20791-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-20791-9
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Religion and PhilosophyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities
Publish with us
Chapter history
-
Latest
Medicine and Travel in the Colonies (1600–1750)- Published:
- 08 July 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20791-9_615-2
-
Original
Medicine and Travel in the Colonies (1600–1750)- Published:
- 30 April 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20791-9_615-1