Jesuit recipes, Jesuit receipts: the Society of Jesus and the introduction of exotic materia medica into Europe

Samir Boumediene (1)

1 IHRIM - Institut d’Histoire des Représentations et des Idées dans les Modernités

This paper considers the commercial activities of the Jesuits in the context of their large-scale trade in new medicines to urban centres in Europe. It shows how this trade was facilitated by their network of colleges, convents and missions which enabled books, texts, people, drugs and curiosities to circulate. It exemplifies this process by focussing on the commodification of drugs and using the example of cinchona, which came to be known as Jesuit’s bark.

Mots clés: Jesuits; medicines; drugs; bark; cinchona; Americas; Pharmacopoiea

Domaines: Histoire; Histoire, Philosophie et Sociologie des sciences; Religions

Samir Boumediene. Jesuit recipes, Jesuit receipts: the Society of Jesus and the introduction of exotic materia medica into Europe. Cultural Worlds of the Jesuits in Colonial Latin America, , 2020, Knowledge Unlatched. ⟨halshs-03097608⟩