Foust Rhubarb

The Wondrous Drug
Course Book
ISBN: 978-1-4008-6265-8
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 394 Seiten

Reihe: Princeton Legacy Library

An Asian plant with mysterious cathartic powers, medicinal rhubarb spurred European trade expeditions and obsessive scientific inquiry from the Renaissance until the twentieth century. Rarely, however, had there been a plant that so thoroughly frustrated Europeans' efforts to acquire it and to master its special botanical and chemical properties. Here Clifford Foust presents the remarkable efforts of the explorers, traders, botanists, gardeners, physicians, and pharmacists who tried to adapt rhubarb for convenient use in Europe. His is an intriguing tale of how humans and their institutions have been affected by natural realities they do not entirely comprehend. Readers interested in the history of medicine, pharmaceutics, botany, or horticulture will be fascinated by this once-perplexing plant: highly valued by physicians for its cathartic properties, rhubarb resisted revealing its active chemical principles, had many widely varying species, and did not breed true by seed. This history includes sections on the geographic and economic importance of rhubarb--which explain how the plant became a major state monopoly for Russia and an important commodity for the East India companies--and a discussion of rhubarb's emergence as an international culinary craze during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Originally published in 1992.

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Autoren/Hrsg.

Foust, Clifford M.

Fachgebiete

• Medizin | Veterinärmedizin Medizin | Public Health | Pharmazie | Zahnmedizin Medizin, Gesundheitswesen Geschichte der Medizin

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Ch. 1 The Roots of Rhubarb 3

Ch. 2 The Very True Rhubarb: The Seventeenth Century 18

Ch. 3 The Russian Rhubarb Trade 46

Ch. 4 The East India Company and European Trade 79

Ch. 5 Collecting and Systematizing 96

Ch. 6 Accommodating the Root: The Society of Arts and Other Promotions 112

Ch. 7 Rhubarb as Medicine: The Eighteenth Century 136

Ch. 8 The Search Ends? 158

Ch. 9 The Testing of Rhubarb 180

Ch. 10 Tarts and Wine 213

Conclusion 240

Notes to the Chapters, with List of Abbreviations 249

Bibliography 321

Index 363