Pressing On

This issue of History of Pharmacy and Pharmaceuticals was both a treat and a blur to bring to fruition. Over the past few months, there has been a whirlwind of activity at the editorial offices, including research trips to unfamiliar countries, new grants, and new personnel at the AIHP, in addition to building new courses and finishing up teaching for the summer and fall. Of course, let us not forget personal holidays. Of note—and certainly worth highlighting—was the National Endowment for the Humanities’ (NEH) recent grant support for the Kremers Reference Files (KRF). With funds from the NEH, personnel have been hired in Madison to help gain intellectual control over and then make more accessible valuable history of pharmacy, pharmaceutical, and medical documents. These efforts to modernize the KRF and make its materials more accessible to researchers and the public, which we are enthusiastic about, have the potential to widen the field and ultimately encourage new analyses and generate new knowledges.

As the editorial transition continues to unfold at HoPP and as the journal finds itself with a new look and feel—along with a new website and online submission process—we are delighted to present the contents of this issue. Herein you will find research articles from emerging scholars in the field and from outside the United States. Naomi Rendina, the recipient of an AIHP PhD Support Grant in 2019 and the one-time social media coordinator at the institute, writes about augmentation drugs and childbirth in the United States during the twentieth century, a topic that could not be more relevant in today’s climate. Her article, partially based on her dissertation, challenges readers to think about the development of chemical interventions to accelerate the birthing process and reflect on what is and is not “natural.” Then we shift to Mexico and the history of chemistry. In Marian Ortiz-Reynoso and Gabriel Eduardo Cuevas Gonzalez-Bravo’s well-researched and expansive article, a spotlight is placed on two key historical actors and elemental analysis in the nineteenth century. According to the authors, in a rich and comprehensive narrative, this story helps us better understand the particularities of intrastate scientific knowledge translation and promotion.

This issue then switches gears. The Conversations section features one of the foremost thinkers in science and technology studies, Sergio Sismondo. In an illuminating interview, Rafaela Zorzanelli probes Sismondo on the role of the patient in the marketplace, how drug markets function, the nature of ethics in biomedicine, and more generally how STS affects histories of pharmacy and pharmaceuticals. Finally, in the Visual Pharmacy section, readers are introduced to the AIHP’s first-ever online digital exhibit, launched in 2021. “The Misappropriation of Native/Indigenous Imagery in Pharmaceutical Advertising” documents and analyzes how drug companies and pharmaceutical manufacturers have misappropriated Native and Indigenous imagery, customs, and beliefs to market their products, particularly during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The short article provides a useful primer for the exhibit, and we hope you will take the time to explore the exhibit in more detail in the weeks and months ahead.