Smith, Robyn (Author)
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Volume: 40
Pages: 179--189
Biochemists investigating the problem of the vitamins in the early years of the twentieth century were working without an object, as such. Although they had developed a fairly elaborate idea of the character of the `vitamine' and its role in metabolism, vitamins were not yet biochemical objects, but rather `functional ascriptions' and `explanatory devices'. I suggest that an early instance of the changing status of the object of the `vitamins' can be found in their stabilization, through the course of World War I, as bio-political objects for the British and Allied war effort. Vitamins emerged as players, active agents, in Britain's wartime bio-political problems of food distribution and population health and because of this they became increasingly real as bio-political objects, even prior to their isolation as bio-chemical molecules. I suggest that the materiality of our biology has agency in the development of political regimes and schemes.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Wendt, Diane;
(2010)
The Man with a Fish on His Back: Science, Romance, and Repugnance in the Selling of Cod-Liver Oil
(/isis/citation/CBB001021093/)
Article
Sen, Srabani;
(2005)
Dawn of Nutrition Research in India---Pre-Independence Era
(/isis/citation/CBB000600469/)
Chapter
Stoff, Heiko;
(2010)
Enzyme, Hormone, Vitamine: Von der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft geförderte Wirkstoffforschung, 1920--1970
(/isis/citation/CBB001036194/)
Article
Fara, Patricia;
(2015)
Women, Science and Suffrage in World War I
(/isis/citation/CBB001422105/)
Article
David E. Allen;
(2016)
Uses of Sphagnum Moss in Folk Medicine
(/isis/citation/CBB009547111/)
Book
Tracey Loughran;
(2017)
Shell-Shock and Medical Culture in First World War Britain
(/isis/citation/CBB472571862/)
Article
Alberti, Samuel J. M. M.;
(2015)
The “Regiment of Skeletons”: A First World War Medical Collection
(/isis/citation/CBB001551013/)
Thesis
Gagen, Wendy Jane;
(2004)
Disabling Masculinity: Ex-Servicemen, Disability and Gender Identity, 1914--1930
(/isis/citation/CBB001560534/)
Thesis
Brown, Robert J.;
(2006)
Fateful Alliance: The 1918 Influenza Pandemic and the First World War. In the British Context
(/isis/citation/CBB001561476/)
Article
Bivins, Roberta E.;
(2007)
“The English Disease” or “Asian Rickets”? Medical Responses to Postcolonial Immigration
(/isis/citation/CBB000830245/)
Article
Chatterjee, I. B.;
(2009)
The History of Vitamin C Research in India
(/isis/citation/CBB001034009/)
Thesis
Smith, Robyn;
(2007)
Exploring the “As Yet Unknown” in Historical Epistemology, ExperimentalSystems and Contemporary Nutrition
(/isis/citation/CBB001560670/)
Article
Waddington, Keir;
(2001)
The Science of Cows: Tuberculosis, Research and the State in the United Kingdom, 1890-1914
(/isis/citation/CBB000102228/)
Article
Geddes, J. F.;
(2009)
The Doctors' Dilemma: Medical Women and the British Suffrage Movement
(/isis/citation/CBB001030822/)
Article
Osten, Philipp;
(2009)
Emotion, Medizin und Volksbelehrung: die Entstehung des “deutschen Kulturfilms”
(/isis/citation/CBB000932718/)
Article
Wingfield, Nancy M.;
(2013)
The Enemy Within: Regulating Prostitution and Controlling Venereal Disease in Cisleithanian Austria during the Great War
(/isis/citation/CBB001201829/)
Article
Nahum, Henri;
(2008)
Défense corporatiste, xénophobie et antisémitisme dans le milieu médical: Le “privilège roumain”, 1930--1940
(/isis/citation/CBB000933234/)
Book
Yanikda, Yücel;
(2013)
Healing the Nation: Prisoners of War, Medicine and Nationalism in Turkey, 1914--1939
(/isis/citation/CBB001452047/)
Article
Guly, H. R.;
(2013)
Scurvy and Other Vitamin Deficiencies during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration
(/isis/citation/CBB001200831/)
Thesis
Byerly, Carol R.;
(2001)
The politics of disease and war: Infectious disease in the United States Army during World War I
(/isis/citation/CBB001562595/)
Be the first to comment!