Dutch transatlantic medicine trade in the eighteenth century

This book offers a fascinating insight into the trade and traffic of medicines between the Republic of the United Provinces and the overseas colonies and trading stations of the West India Company in the eighteenth century.Those drugs were indispensable for the care and treatment of the Company's servants, soldiers and black slaves. The author does not restrict himself to the shipments of medicines to the Atlantic region and vice versa. He also pays attention to the diseases in the colonies and to the surgeons who were responsible for the control, preparing and administering of the materia medica. This work constitutes a pharmaco-social study of one complete cross-section of past colonial medicine trade and a major reference tool in the history of medicine and pharmacy.

Preface; Acknowledgments; Introduction. I From archaic medicines to marketable drugs: Early traffic in remedies; Pharmacopoeial guidance; The Dutch West India Company; The merchants elite Van Eeghen; Notes. II Some early overseas medicine shipments: The Columbus medicine chest; Portuguese drugs traffic; Whaling trade; American drugs shipped to Spain and the Mediterranean; Comparison; Notes. III The traffic in medicines to Curaçao: Caribbean medicine traffic; Colonial mission and drugs traffic; Trade for care; The impact of Amsterdam pharmacopoeia; Shipboard medicines sent by Amsterdam and other WIC Chambers; Volume and kind of WIC medicines; Sale and purchase by the Government. IV Letters from Guiana: Mad about drugs; The surgeon's medicine shop; Health care; Expedition to Pomeroon; Drugs in a vicious society; Notes. V Medicine traffic to Dutch West African forts: The White Man's Grave; Medical care; Seasonal drugs; Hospital and pharmacy; Arguin's medical ingredients; The benefit of yesterdays drugs; Galen in the tropics; Notes. VI The origin and quality control of travelling simples: Contribution of the New World drugs; Remedies of African origin; Notes. Appendices: 1. Simples kept in apothecary shops; 2. Compounds kept in apothecary shops; 3. Glossary of some drugs and therapeutic indications;
4. Glossary of some medical terms; 5. At random search on shipped plant drugs. Bibliography. 1. Abbreviations; 2. Printed materials; Tables, Figures and Maps. Index.