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Article ID: CBB001550417

An Empire's Extract: Chemical Manipulations of Cinchona Bark in the Eighteenth-Century Spanish Atlantic World (2014)

Osiris: A Research Journal Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Volume: 29, no. 1
Issue: 1
Pages: 215-229

DOI: 10.1086/678104

Publication Date: 2014
Edition Details: Title of volume: “Chemical Knowledge in the Early Modern World”
Language: English

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Colonialism Malaria Spain, colonies Botany Chemistry Medical chemistry Science and government Atlantic world Spain

In 1790, the Spanish Crown sent a “botanist-chemist” to South America to implement production of a chemical extract made from cinchona bark, a botanical medicament from the Andes used throughout the Atlantic World to treat malarial fevers. Even though the botanist-chemist's efforts to produce the extract failed, this episode offers important insight into the role of chemistry in the early modern Atlantic World. Well before the Spanish Crown tried to make it a tool of empire, chemistry provided a vital set of techniques that circulated among a variety of healers, who used such techniques to make botanical medicaments useful and intelligible in new ways.

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