The American Institute of the History of Pharmacy (AIHP) is pleased to announce that the first issue of History of Pharmacy and Pharmaceuticals (HoPP), the Institute’s renamed academic journal is now available online at JSTOR (63.1, 2021)! This issue of the journal is also the first published under AIHP’s new partnership with the University of Wisconsin Press. HoPP continues Pharmacy in History, which AIHP self-published from 1959 through 2020.
The first issue of History of Pharmacy and Pharmaceuticals features articles about trademarks and intellectual property rights in the British drug market in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; the history of non-branded compounded drugs in the Netherlands; the introduction of cocaine to China; and an analysis of the global advertising of psychoactive drugs. Editor-in-Chief Lucas Richert said that the first issue of the re-titled HoPP “represents the increasingly global and vibrant nature of pharmacy and pharmaceutical history.”
This special issue is published in coordination with the Canadian Bulletin of Medical History and the Social History of Alcohol and Drugs. Each journal will be releasing an issue inspired by the 2020 New Social History of Pharmacy and Pharmaceuticals conference hosted by AIHP and the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Pharmacy.
To celebrate the publication of HoPP, the University of Wisconsin Press has made several articles from the issue open-access and freely available for the next three months.
Allen & Hanburys advertised “Own Name” products to local pharmacists in 1909. Image featured in Laura Robson-Mainwaring’s article in HoPP 63.1
Laura Robson-Mainwaring’s article, “‘Own Name,’ ‘No Name,’ and ‘the Plague of Fancy Names’: Trademarks in the British Pharmaceutical Market, c. 1875–1920,” reconsiders branded medicines in the British marketplace and draws on scholarship from business historians to show that brands were redefined during the late nineteenth century as a result of trademark legislation, particularly the Trade Marks Registration Act of 1875. The article also explores how trademarks were used as a regulatory and communicative device within a chain of distribution [Open Access until February 2022].
Toine Pieters’s article, “The Battle Between David and Goliath: Drug Making and the Dutch Pharmacist versus the International Pharmaceutical Industry, 1865–2020,” explores how Dutch pharmacists at the end of the nineteenth century succeeded in presenting non-branded, compounded drugs as a therapeutically and economically competitive alternative to the industrially manufactured, packaged, and branded medicines that were then replacing the manually made magistral medicines of pharmacists. The article shows how the international pharmaceutical industry (“Goliath”) did not appreciate the craftsmanship of the Dutch pharmacist (“David”), who could legally disregard drug patents as long as they produced medicine on a one-to-one, magistral prescription basis.
In his article, “Medical Missions, Pharmaceutical Commerce, and Drug Consumption: The Introduction of Cocaine to China, 1887–1910,” Yun Huang explores the arrival—and the use—of cocaine in China from the 1880s to the 1910s. He argues that two groups were instrumental in the emergence of commerce in cocaine: Protestant missionaries, who used modern medicines in their work as healers, and agents for the burgeoning European and American pharmaceutical industries, who were keen to build new markets in Asia. The article asserts that cocaine became a tool of the Western medical establishment and ultimately of colonialism and cultural imperialism [Open Access until February 2022].
1955 Colombian advertisement from Consteña beer advises, “Don’t get overheated… and drink Costeña.” Image featured in the article “Crafting Modernity via Psychoactivity Advertisements” in HoPP 63.1
In the Visual Pharmacy section, Erika Dyck and Mat Saveli write about “Crafting the Modern via Psychoactivity Advertisements.” They examine advertisements for psychoactive products sold in five different geo-political jurisdictions: Canada, Colombia, Yugoslavia, India, and Senegal. They argue that the sale of these products was inextricably bound up with ideas of modernity, nation-building, and a homogenizing of global attitudes towards the benefits of psychoactivity. Advertisers used these ideas to suggest that being modern and performing modernity required the consumption of psychoactive products to cope with the associated strains of being or becoming modern—an idea that applied to individual consumers as well as nations. Dyck and Savelli argue that the history of psychoactive products and modernity are deeply interconnected [Open Access until February 2022].
In the recurring Conversations department, Rafaela Zorzanelli interviews Toine Pieters, who has written broadly about the history of pharmacy, medicines, and diseases. Pieters argues that a rational understanding of substances cannot fully account for their agency and cyclical trajectory, and he suggests that scholars must address the tension between realism and constructivism to better understand the complexity of medicinal and pharmaceutical substances.
The issue also features 11 book reviews on topics ranging from Synthesizing Hope: Matter, Knowledge, and Place in South African Drug Discovery to American Trip: Set, Setting, and the Psychedelic Experience in the Twentieth Century [Both open access until February 2022].
AIHP members can use their JSTOR login credentials and password to access this issue immediately. The print version of the issue will be mailed to all members and subscribers within the next two weeks.
Individuals can join AIHP to receive History of Pharmacy and Pharmaceuticals as a benefit of membership.
Libraries and institutions can subscribe to the journal through the University of Wisconsin Press to receive electronic or print access to History of Pharmacy and Pharmaceuticals.
Happy Reading!
Comments