Agnotology and exotic abortifacients: The cultural production of ignorance in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world

Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society

Volumn 149, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 316-343

  Schiebinger, Londa ^a,b  

^a Institute for Research on Women and Gender   (United States)

^b STANFORD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ABORTIVE AGENT;

ARTICLE; CENTRAL AMERICA; FEMALE; HISTORY; HUMAN; INDUCED ABORTION; LEGUME; MEDICINAL PLANT; PHYTOTHERAPY; SURINAME;

ABORTIFACIENT AGENTS; ABORTION, INDUCED; CARIBBEAN REGION; FABACEAE; FEMALE; HISTORY, 18TH CENTURY; HUMANS; PHYTOTHERAPY; PLANTS, MEDICINAL; SURINAME;

EID: 33947718778     PISSN: 0003049X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Conference Proceeding    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (112)

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9. See also Roy MacLeod, ed., Nature and Empire: Science and the Colonial Enterprise, a special issue (15 [2000]) of Osiris
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11. Londa Schiebinger and Claudia Swan, eds., Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005)
12. Olof Swartz reassigned the plant to the genus Caesalpinia (Observationes botanicae quibus plantae Indiae Occidentalis [Erlangen, 1791], 166). Botanists today use both Poinciana pulcherrima and Caesalpinia pulcherrima
13. Henry Hobhouse, Seeds of Change: Five Plants that Transformed Mankind (New York: Harper & Row, 1985)
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26. Term coined by Robert Proctor, Cancer Wars: How Politics Shapes What We Know and Don't Know About Cancer (New York: Basic Books, 1995), 8
27. See, for example, Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985)
28. Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990)
29. Londa Schiebinger, Nature's Body: Gender in the Making of Modern Science (Boston: Beacon, 1993)
30. Nelly Oudshoorn, Beyond the Natural Body: An Archeology of Sex Hormones (New York: Routledge, 1994)
31. Mario Biagioli, ed., The Science Studies Reader (New York: Routledge, 1999)
32. William Thomas Stearn, "Botanical Exploration to the Time of Linnaeus," Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London 169 (1958): 173-96
33. Much of the history of botany has been written as the rise of systematics. See, for example, Julius von Sachs, Geschichte der Botanik vom XVI. Jahrhundert bis 1860 (Munich, 1875)
34. Edward Lee Greene, Landmarks of Botanical History, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1909)
35. Louis-Jean-Marie Daubenton, Histoire naturelle des animaux, vol. 1 of the Encyclopédie méthodique (Paris, 1782), ix
36. A. W. Haggis, "Fundamental Errors in the Early History of Cinchona," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 10 (1941): 417-59
37. Jaime Jaramillo-Arango, The Conquest of Malaria (London: Heinemann, 1950)
38. John Dixon Hunt, ed., The Dutch Garden in the Seventeenth Century (Washington, D. C: Dumbarton Oaks, 1990)
39. Harold J. Cook, "The Cutting Edge of a Revolution? Medicine and Natural History near the Shores of the North Sea," in Renaissance and Revolution: Humanists, Scholars, Craftsmen and Natural Philosophers in Early Modern Europe, ed. J. Field and F. James (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 45-61
40. Steven Harris, "Long-Distance Corporations, Big Sciences, and the Geography of Knowledge," Configurations 6 (1998): 269-304
41. Johann Blumenbach, The Natural Varieties of Mankind (1795), trans. Thomas Bendyshe (1865; New York: Bergman, 1969), 212 n. 2. Blumenbach codified notions long current in the culture
42. Londa Schiebinger, The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), chap. 3
43. Natalie Davis, Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), 140-202
44. Hans Sloane, A Voyage to the Islands Madera, Barbadoes, Nieves, S. Christophers, and Jamaica; with the Natural History, 2 vols. (London, 1707), 2: 384; 1: lvii, 2, 50
45. Michel-Étienne Descourtilz, Flore pittoresque et médicale des Antilles, 8 vols. (Paris, 1833), 1:27-30
46. Sloane, Voyage 1: cxliii. Other great "dissemblers" of illness, according to Sloane, were servants, "both Whites and Blacks."
47. Edward Shorter, Women's Bodies: A Social History of Women's Encounter with Health, Ill-Health, and Medicine (1982; New Brunswick: Transaction, 1991), 181
48. Sloane, Voyage 1: cxliii; Shorter, Women's Bodies, 190
49. Bartolomé de Las Casas, Historia de las Indias, 3 vols. (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1951), 2: 206
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51. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, ed. Thomas Abernethy (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), 58
52. Historian Barbara Bush discusses the role of women in this insurrection (Slave Women in Caribbean Society, 1650-1832 [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990], 65-73)
53. John Gabriel Stedman, Stedman's Surinam: Life in an Eighteenth-Century Slave Society, ed. Richard Price and Sally Price (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1992), 130, 266
54. Poisons used included le jus de la canne de Madère, le Mancanilier, le Laurier Rose, and la graine de Lilas. Michel-René Hilliard d'Auberteuil, Considérations sur I'état présent de la colonic francaise de Saint-Domingue, 2 vols. (Paris, 1776-77), 2: 139
55. Ligon, cited in Bush, Slave Women, 121
56. Marietta Morrissey, Slave Women in the New World: Gender Stratification in the Caribbean (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1989)
57. See, for examples, the testimony of surgeon Robert Thomas in the House of Commons Sessional Papers of the Eighteenth Century, ed. Sheila Lambert, 147 vols. (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1975), 71: 252
58. Sloane, Voyage 2: 248
59. [Janet Schaw], Journal of a Lady of Quality, ed. Evangeline Andrews (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1922), 112-13
60. Stedman, Stedman's Surinam, 18-21
61. Johann Heinrich Zedler, Grosses vollständiges Universal Lexicon aller Wissenscbaften und Kiinste (Halle and Leipzig, 1732-54), s.v. "Abortus," "Abtreiben."
62. Aristotle, History of Animals, ed. D. M. Balme (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991), 9.3. 583b
63. European medical traditions were influenced also by Arabic scientific traditions. Muslim jurists held that the fetus becomes a human being only after the fourth month of pregnancy (120 days); abortion was allowed up until that time. Basim Masallam, "The Human Embryo in Arabic Scientific and Religious Thought," in The Human Embryo, ed. G. R. Dunstan (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1990), 32-A6, esp. 39
64. Michael Ryan objected in the 1830s that quickening did not occur until half the period of utero-gestation had elapsed, even though the fetus was alive from the very moment of conception (A Manual of Medical Jurisprudence [London, 1831], 151)
65. It was not until 1876 that Oskar Hertwig observed a sperm fertilize an egg. John M. Riddle, Eve's Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), 222
66. Barbara Duden, Disembodying Women: Perspectives on Pregnancy and the Unborn, trans. Lee Hoinacki (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), 79-82
67. Johann Peter Frank, System einer vollständigen medicinischen Polizey, 4 vols. (Mannheim, 1780-90), 2: 61
68. Duden, Disembodying Women
69. Johann Peter Frank and others had argued in favor of abolishing this notion already at mid-century (System 2: 84-122)
70. Günter Jerouschek, "Zur Geschichte des Abtreibungsver-bots, " in Unter anderen Umständen: Zur Geschichte der Abtreibung, ed. Gisela Staupe and Lisa Vieth (Dresden: Deutsches Hygiene-Museum, 1993), 11-26
71. Riddle, Eve's Herbs, 209
72. [Thomas Birch], "Memoirs relating to the Life of Sir Hans Sloane, formerly President of the Royal Society," British Library, Manuscripts Collection, Add. 4241, 25
73. Sir Gavin de Beer, Sir Hans Sloane and the British Museum (1953; New York: Arno Press, 1975), 72-73, 101
74. Jean Astruc, Traité des maladies des femmes, 6 vols. (Paris, 1761-65), 2: 278
75. Donald Monro, A Treatise on Medical and Pharmaceutical Chemistry and the Materia Medica, 3 vols. (London, 1788), 2: 445
76. Réné Desfontaines, Catalogus Flantarum Horti Regii Parisiensis3 (Paris, 1829), introd
77. See also [Monsieur Joncquet], Hortus Regius (Paris, 1666), 3
78. Catalogus plantarum [Horti Regii Parisiensis] (Anno 1766), 228
79. Hermanno Boerhaave, Index Alter Plantarum quae in Horto Academico Lugduno-Batavo (Lugduni Batavorum, 1727), pt. 2: 57
80. Carl Linnaeus, Hortus Upsaliensis, Exhibens Plantas Exoticas (Stockholm, 1748), 1: 101
81. "Catalogue des plantes apportées en France par le capitaine de vaisseau Milius commandant le Lys," MS 305 (Bibliothèque Centrale du Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris)
82. Philip Miller, The Gardeners Dictionary (London, 1768), s. v. "Poinciana (Pulcherrima)."
83. Hermann Boerhaave, Historia plantarum (Rome, 1727), 488-89
84. For a full discussion of this non-transfer of knowledge, see Schiebinger, Plants and Empire, chap. 4
85. Iris Engstrand, Spanish Scientists in the New World: The Eighteenth-Century Expeditions (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981), 3
86. William T. Stearn, "Carl Linnaeus's Acquaintance with Tropical Plants," Taxon 37 (1988): 776-81
87. Mary Gunn and L. E. Codd, Botanical Exploration of Southern Africa (Cape Town: A. A. Balkema, 1981), 25
88. Irving Rouse, The Taino: Rise and Decline of the People who Greeted Columbus (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 3-4
89. Private communication, Lee Ann Newsom, Department of Anthropology, Pennsylvania State University. See also Charles Gunn and John Dennis, World Guide to Tropical Drift Seeds and Fruits (New York: Quadrangle, 1976)
90. Stearn, "Botanical Exploration," 193
91. J. Heniger, Hendrik Adriaan van Reede tot Drakenstein and Hortus Malabaricus (Rotterdam: A. A. Balkema, 1986), 76-77
92. Richard Ligon, A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbados (London, 1657), 15
93. Miller, Gardeners Dictionary, s.v., "Poinciana (Pulcherrima)."
94. Carney, Black Rice. Many African foods were brought aboard slave ships as sustenance for the passage. Edward Long notes that, in addition to slaves, "African traders" often carried "some valuable drugs" from Africa to the New World (The History of Jamaica, 3 vols. [London: 1774], 1: 491)
95. See also Judith Carney, "African Traditional Plant Knowledge in the Circum-Caribbean Region," Journal of Ethnobiology 23.2 (2003): 167-85
96. Thomas Dancer also noted that "persons of the Jewish Nation" introduced dates and palm oil into the island (Catalogue of Plants, Exotic and Indigenous, in the Botanical Garden, Jamaica [St. Jago de la Vega, Jamaica, 1792])
97. Edward Ayensu, Medicinal Plants of West Africa (Algonac, Mich.: Reference Publications, 1978)
98. Maurice Iwu, Handbook of African Medicinal Plants (Boca Raton: CRC Press, 1993)
99. Beb Oliver-Bever, Medicinal Plants of Tropical West Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986)
100. for the French West Indies, see Gabriel Debien, Les Esclaves aux Antilles françaises, XVIIE-XVIIIE siècle (Basse-Terre: Société d'histoire de la Guadeloupe, 1974), 39-68
101. Hans Neuwinger, African Ethnobotany (London: Chapman & Hall, 1996), 321-24
102. Barbara Bush discusses some continuities between abortive practices in Africa and Caribbean slave societies in "Hard Labor: Women, Childbirth, and Resistance in British Caribbean Slave Societies," in More than Chattel: Black Women and Slavery in the Americas, ed. David Gaspar and Darlene Hines (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 193- 217, esp. 204-06
103. Debien, Esclaves, 364-65
104. Augustin-Pyrame de Candolle, Prodromus systematis naturalis regni vegetabilis, 17vols. (Paris, 1824-73), 2: 484
105. M. D. Dassanayake and F. R. Fosberg, eds., Flora of Ceylon, 8 vols. (New Delhi: Amerind Publishing Co., 1980-94), 7: 46-48
106. It is today known as an abortifacient in the Dutch East Indies. John Watt and Maria Breyer-Brandwijk, The Medicinal and Poisonous Plants of Southern and Eastern Africa (Edinburgh: Livingstone, 1962), 564
107. William Keegan, "The Caribbean, Including Northern South America and Lowland Central America: Early History," The Cambridge World History of Food, ed. Kenneth Kiple and Kriemhild Coneè Ornelas, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 2: 1260-78, esp. 1269-71
108. Dancer, Catalogue of Plants
109. Arthur Broughton, "Hortus Eastensis: A Catalogue of Exotic Plants, in the Garden of Hinton East, Esq., in the Mountains of Liguanea, Island of Jamaica," appendix to vol. 1 of Bryan Edwards, The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British West Indies, 2 vols. (London, 1794)
110. Registres du Comité de Librairie (March 1763), 1: 122.I thank James E. McClellan III for'this information
111. Joseph Raulin, De la Conservation des enfans, 3 vols. (Paris, 1768), 1: "épitre au roi."
112. Jean-Baptiste Dazille, Observations sur les maladies des nègres, 2 vols. (Paris, 1776), 1: 1-2