Welcome to Pharmacy in History’s special issue, The Future!
In 1909, the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti first published his “Manifesto of Futurism” in the newspaper Le Figaro. It led to the development of a full-blown Futurism movement, initially based in Milan. The Italian Futurists argued, now 110 years ago, that it was vital to reject the “cult of the past” and focus on technology, speed, youth—and to embrace newness. The group proved influential in the performing arts, music, literature, and architecture. Futurism’s effects were widely felt in the art world, as well, impacting Art Deco, Dadaism, and Surrealism. More recently, Blade Runner (1982), a science-fiction film that presented a dark vision of the future, also owed much of its look and feel to Antonio Sant’Elia, a Milan-based architect and movement member.
To celebrate Pharmacy in History’s six-decade anniversary, it seemed appropriate to assess the field, generate a conversation, and think about the past, present, and future. We asked an assemblage of well-established and emerging scholars to contribute their ideas and share some innovative projects. Some of the authors here will be less familiar to long-time PH readers, while others will be immediately recognizable.
This year also marks the tenth anniversary of Elizabeth Siegel Watkins’s important overview of the field, “From History of Pharmacy to Pharmaceutical History.”1 In these pages, Watkins recommended a more expansive approach for the field and, by extension, this journal. It was a significant article ten years ago—and it remains so now. She suggested the time had come for the history of pharmaceuticals to be recognized as a discipline in its own right, not just a sub-discipline of medical history, or as an afterthought for historians of pharmacy. According to Watkins:
The new pharmaceutical history breaks with the older tradition of history of pharmacy in that the object of investigation is no longer the pharmacist or the apothecary and his medicinal preparations, but rather pharmaceutical companies (both big pharma and biotech), the industrial production of drugs, and the penetration of these products both in their literal and figurative senses into so many aspects of modern society.2
La centrale elettrica (colored ink and pencil on paper) by Antonio Sant’ Elia, 1914. Image courtesy of WikiMedia Commons.
A full decade on, these musings helped give shape to this issue, particularly, and to guide this journal in a broader sense. On a personal level, back in 2009, I was in the final, tense stages of my graduate studies across the ocean. Fast forward, this issue now marks my second outing as the Editor in Chief. And I felt it was worthwhile to take stock. It seemed useful for pharmacists and historians to once more reflect on a variety of levels. What, we asked our contributors, might the next sixty years hold? Where is the field moving, or not moving? What might we witness with respect to pharmacy and pharmaceutical analyses? For that matter, where is the profession of pharmacy going? And should AIHP embrace or reject the “cult of the past,” as the Futurists in Italy called it? That is, how should we balance the old and new? No easy task.
Our contributors were up for the challenge. They gamely advanced ruminations and recommendations that address artifacts and archival collections, original areas for research and publications, as well as where the next generation of historians of pharmacy might be lurking. Readers will learn about ground-breaking projects that are taking place in India, Africa, and elsewhere. And the subject matters—as examined by Ved Baruah, Richard Del Rio, Anna Greenwood, Ben Mechen, and Erika Dyck—cover counterfeits, poisons, psychoactivity, sexuality, addiction, and other topics. David Herzberg reveals the muddy and false dichotomy between drugs and medicines, while Joe Gabriel presents a clear vision of AIHP’s George Urdang. Paula De Vos, for her part, offers a spectacular synopsis of early modern pharmacy scholarship. Meanwhile, Stuart Anderson, Greg Higby, John Parascandola, and Bill Zellmer explore some of the structural and intellectual choices that the new historians of pharmacy might face. The venerable Mickey Smith and Metta Lou Henderson discuss Rexall and women in pharmacy, while Briony Hudson unpacks the value of archives and artifacts. (To her credit, she came up with the snazziest title of all our submissions.)
The following pages, however, also contain three research articles that investigate medical cannabis regulation. Matthew DeCloedt, Lucía Romero, and Michael Couchman, who operate in the fields of law, sociology, and history, respectively, cast light on a complicated sociopolitical and medico-scientific question. Together, they examine the extent to which medical cannabis should be available to patients and how health and political authorities ought to regulate it. While drawing on different sources and separated by academic fields, both Couchman and DeCloedt use Canada as an example, while Romero focuses in on her native Argentina and the role of women activists. As the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Pharmacy offers its first cannabis class in January 2020, and governments across the country and planet debate medical cannabis, the timing of these papers could not be more appropriate. As an added bonus, Natalie Schmitz, an Assistant Professor in the Pharmacy Practice Division at the UW–Madison School of Pharmacy, offers a thoughtful response. Schmitz, who co-convenes the cannabis course at the UW-Madison SoP, believes that the US has a chance to institute policies that both improve access to cannabis products and protects consumers from mislabeling, adulteration, and fraud. I agree that we can learn from contemporary examples, as well as take lessons from the past.
Finally, at the conclusion of 2019 and the dawn of 2020, it is worth raising a glass of brandy and toasting ourselves here at AIHP. The Institute hosted the 44th International Congress for the History of Pharmacy, and it was an enriching experience to host so many committed history of pharmacy scholars from around the world. More selfishly, it is also worth boasting as we are toasting. AIHP Assistant Director Greg Bond’s entry in the conference’s poster competition, “‘I Could Feel that My Presence There was Looked Upon as an Intrusion’: African-American Students at Predominantly White Schools and Colleges of Pharmacy, 1842–1925,” earned him a first-place nod. Meanwhile, Greg Higby, for his part, was awarded the George Urdang Medal and the Antoin Augustin Parmentier Medal. Congratulations to both! For these, and many other reasons, the Congress was rewarding.
As everyone at AIHP casts a gaze into the future and looks ahead, it is entirely fitting that Milan, Italy—the home of Futurism—will host the next International Congress of the History of Pharmacy in 2021.
La Città Nuova. Particolare (ink over black pencil on paper) by Antonio Sant’ Elia, 1914. Image courtesy of WikiMedia Commons.
Footnotes
↵1. Elizabeth Siegel Watkins, “From History of Pharmacy to Pharmaceutical History,” Pharmacy in History 51, no. 1 (2009): 3–13, https://www.jstor.org/stable/41112411.
↵2. Watkins, “From History of Pharmacy to Pharmaceutical History,” 4.
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