Abstract

The history of global medical entanglements represents a unique phenomenon in that medical substances have both been traded as material goods and also exchanged at the level of medical ideas about their properties and uses. They can be studied then both through the patterns of commercial trade and transport, and through the analysis of medical and pharmacological ideas. While there is much excellent research on the intercultural history of the trade in medical substances, and of global medical knowledge exchange, few scholars have considered the significant place for purported aphrodisiac substances which featured in medical descriptions of multiple cultures prior to the mid-nineteenth century. This paper provides a revision of historical scholarship on aphrodisiacs from a long global history perspective based on reading of English, French, German, Dutch, Swiss, and American medical and colonial sources from c.1700-1900 which referred to medical knowledge derived from Middle-Eastern, African, South American, and Indian-subcontinent traditions.

Presenters

Alison Downham Moore
Associate Dean of Research and Associate Professor of History & Medical Humanities, School of Humanities and Communication Arts, Western Sydney University, Sydney, Australia, Australia

Details

Presentation Type

Paper Presentation in a Themed Session

Theme

2020 Special Focus: Transcultural Humanities in a Global World

KEYWORDS

Global history, History of medicine, Intellectual history, Aphrodisiacs

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