Physicians, Healers, and their Remedies in Colonial Suriname

Davis, Natalie Zemon

doi:10.3138/cbmh.33.1.3

Cited by 8 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Jatropha gossypiifolia L. is described by Maria Sibylla Merian as a remedy to treat the lethargic disease Beljack, a condition known nowadays as dysentery [ 174 ], in agreement with the vernacular name, bellyache bush. The oil present in the seeds of the genus is known for its purgative action and it has been reported that the leaves of some species, including J. gossypiifolia, have the same effect [ 146 ].…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Female naturalists and the patterns of suppression of women scientists in history: the example of Maria Sibylla Merian and her contributions about useful plants

Mariath

Baratto

2023

J Ethnobiology Ethnomedicine

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Background This work reunites many women naturalists who registered knowledge about native flora in scientific expeditions around the globe between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Since male naturalists are more recognized in this period of time, we aimed to list female naturalists that published plant descriptions and observations, focusing on the work of Maria Sibylla Merian and to analyze her trajectory as an example to discuss the patterns of the suppression of women scientists. A second aim was to inventory the useful plants described in Maria Sibylla’s Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium and find pharmacological evidence about the traditional uses described for those plants cited as medicinal and toxic. Methods A survey of female naturalists was carried out by searching information in Pubmed, Scielo, Google Scholar and Virtual Health Library. Once Maria Sibylla published her book Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium by her own, without male co-authors, and also this book is one of the only to have text and illustrations altogether and there are reports indicating information on useful plants in this work, she and her book were chosen as subject of this research. All the information was tabulated by dividing the plants into food, medicinal, toxic, aromatic or other uses. Finally, with the combinations of the scientific name of medicinal and toxic plants with information about their popular uses, a search was carried out in databases in order to indicate current pharmacological studies that reported evidences about the traditional uses described. Results We found 28 women naturalists who participated in scientific expeditions or trips, or in a curiosity cabinet, or who were collectors of Natural History between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. All these women illustrated botanical species and/or recorded their everyday or medicinal use or reported their observations in the form of a published work, letters or diaries. Also, the trajectory of Maria Sibylla Merian revealed that her scientific relevance has been neglected from the eighteenth century by mechanisms of suppression, most of the time by male depreciation, which can be seen as a pattern for suppression of women in science. However, Maria Sibyllas’ contributions have been valued again in the twenty-first century. In Maria Sibylla’s work, 54 plants were identified, 26 of them used for food, 4 of them aromatic, 8 medicinal, 4 toxic and 9 other uses. Conclusion This study evidences that there are female naturalists whose work could be an important source for ethnopharmacological studies. Researching about women scientists, talking about them and highlighting the gender bias present in the scientific academy about the way the history of science is told is essential for the construction of a more diverse and richer scientific academy. The traditional use of 7 of 8 medicinal plants and 3 of 4 toxic plants reported was correlated with pharmacological studies, highlighting the importance of this historical record and its potential to direct strategic research in traditional medicine.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Female naturalists and the patterns of suppression of women scientists in history: the example of Maria Sibylla Merian and her contributions about useful plants

Mariath

Baratto

2023

J Ethnobiology Ethnomedicine

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“…Such texts show how people used local law courts to solve disputes concerning stench, sewage and blockage by various types of refuse, and sought to formally arrange access to clean water, for instance from shared wells. In Latin American scholarship, for instance, Spanish Inquisitional records from the early colonial period give insight into the medical pluralism and continuities across pre/colonial boundaries (Gómez 2013;Few 2015;Zemon Davis 2016). Likewise, running water from rivers, canals or aqueducts provided a major resource for many artisanal activities and means of disposing waste, and as such could be sources of new technologies, conflict and negotiation (Squatriti 2000;Conesa and Poirier 2019).…”

Section: Texts and Imagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Healthscaping Approach: Towards a Global History of Early Public Health

Geltner¹,

Coomans²

2022

Preprint

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This article presents a modular, multidisciplinary methodology for tracing how different communities in the deeper past adapted their behaviors and shaped their environments to address the health risks they faced, a process also known as “healthscaping.” Historians have made major strides in reconstructing preventative health programs across the pre- or non-industrial world, thereby challenging a common view of public health as a product of Euro-American modernity and biomedicine. However, these studies’ general focus on cities and their reliance on archival and other documents that are more readily available in Euro-American contexts, limit the intervention’s potential for rethinking the earlier history of public health comparatively, transregionally and on a global scale. A broader definition of health, additional sources and alternative methodologies allow us to expand research in and especially beyond urban Europe, promoting a global turn in health historiography that operates outside the seductive teleology of modernization, colonialism and imperialism.

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“…Although the wood of Q. amara, known as lignum quassiae, was already exported in large quantities to Europe in 1755, Rolander was the first to provide a (Latin) description of the flowering and fruiting parts of this plant, but Linnaeus never got hold of his specimens (van Andel et al, 2012a). Kwasi is said to have sold his secret knowledge regarding Q. amara to Carl Gustav Dahlberg, the Swedish owner of the plantation Nieuw Timotibo and Rolander's mentor (Davis, 2016). In 1761, Dahlberg brought a specimen of the plant to Linnaeus, who dedicated its scientific name to Kwasi and the bitter taste of the wood (Blom, 1763;Linné, 1762).…”

Section: A Rapid History Of Quassia's Name and Famementioning

confidence: 99%