A Taste of the Medical History of the Indian Ocean World
Event
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Description: For centuries, traders and missionaries crossed between the coasts of Eastern Africa, the Middle East and South and East Asia on the monsoon winds. Among the most valuable items they carried were medicines: from powerful drugs, like opium, to substances we now consider foodstuffs, like sugar and pepper. In this seminar, we will look at some of the traces this trade left, in the form of illustrated texts, on pharmacology, apothecaries’ notebooks, botanists’ dried plants, anatomical illustrations and medicine containers—often works of art in their own right. We will consider the enduring legacy of these exchanges of medicine and the ideas that accompanied them.