HIST-355 Bioprospecting and the Ecologies of Medicine
Bioprospecting is the process of exploration in the nonhuman natural world for new resources that have social, medical, and commercial value. Today, pharma companies search for natural products with biochemical potency. This impulse emerges from a long tradition in which imperial powers dispatched bioprospectors to make the natural wealth of so-called “New Worlds” have value. This course follows the entangled history of medicine and the exploitation of the natural world from 1300 to the present. Key topics include: the drug trade and the spice trade, exploration of the tropics, medical ethics and trials, the development of the hospital, indigenous knowledge, the scientific method, poisons and antipoisons, changing biodiversity.
Writing-Intensive (18)
Credits
1