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E-book Mixing Medicines : The Global Drug Trade and Early Modern Russia
The paradox of early modern Russian medical records is that we haveboth notable survivals and problematic absences. In particular for theseventeenth century, we have sometimes day-by-day accounts of the spe-cific medicaments prescribed to the tsar, a kind of detailed elite pharma-cy record that has rarely survived in other locations. We also have lists ofimports, inventories from the court medical department, reports of vari-ous kinds and a number of pharmacy texts. What we often lack areexplanatory documents. In the case of most prescriptions, we are giventhe name of the patient, the name of the prescribing physician and/or theapothecary creating the medicine, and the list of ingredients. No mentionof the disease treated. No mention of the medical theory underpinningdiagnosis and cure. The clearest point emerging from these documents isthe materials of pharmacy practice. These facts fundamentally shape the questions we can ask here, andtake us in a useful direction for the history and science and medicine. Looking at materials gives us a more tactile history than considering the-ory texts. We can move from theory – what should happen – to practice– what did happen. However, such tactile histories are hampered by thefact that too often the actual materials of historical science and medicinewere destroyed or lost. Yet their absence should not mean that we shouldignore them; they are simply too important a part of that history to leaveaside. Here, we can circumvent this issue by looking at documents aboutmaterials. This does not give us the same view of historical scientific andmedical practices as having the actual materials would, but it does give usa vital window onto that history. We can then ask, what can these mate-ria medicadocuments tell us about early modern medicine? And in par-ticular, what does the specific interest in medical drugs tell us aboutmaterial culture and the history of science and medicine.
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