Nouvelles substances médicales dans la culture du 18e siècle

Le Quinquina (Cinchona officinalis)

Early Interventions: Uses and Abuses of ―New Substances in Eighteenth-Century

Culture  

Mary Crone-Romanovski, 8390 Orchard Knoll Lane, Columbus, OH 43235; Tel: 

(614) 314-6362; E-mail: mary.croneromanovski@gmail.com

This panel invites explorations of the treatment of substances in eighteenth-century literature and culture. Such substances might include tea, coffee, chocolate, sugar, rum, gin, or tobacco, to name a few. Eighteenth-century uses of these items ranged from the mundane (an ordinary item on the tea table) to the taboo (public drunkenness) to the political (boycotts of sugar to protest slavery). This panel seeks to better understand the range of uses and abuses of these relatively ―new‖ substances in eighteenth-century life: How were these items represented in literature, on the stage, or in visual culture? To what uses were they put in everyday life, the political arena, or the medical profession? What potential is there for using a history of substance use/abuse in the period to help us better understand twenty-first-century conceptions of the legal, economic, and social importance of substances and substance-abuse? The panel welcomes multi-disciplinary approaches to these questions and others related to the treatment of substances in eighteenth-century culture.