Hostname: page-component-7b9c58cd5d-nzzs5 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-03-15T16:47:36.504Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

A Forgotten Case of “Scientific Excellence on the Periphery”: The Nationalist Cocaine Science of Alfredo Bignon, 1884–1887

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 December 2006

Paul Gootenberg
Affiliation:
Department of History, Stony Brook University
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

In recent years, Latin American history has been awash in an exciting wave of scholarship on the history of science and medicine. Historians are exploring Latin American reactions to foreign medical, sanitary and scientific missions; the creation of national research institutions; the impact of epidemics on conceptions of urban space, politics and social control; the role of indigenous and folk cures in modern public health campaigns; and the relation of transnational eugenics movements to national anxieties about race, among other fertile topics. Pioneering medical historian Marcos Cueto dubs this focus “scientific excellence on the periphery”—the idea that surprising avenues of research and innovation occurred in societies generally deemed “underdeveloped,” especially in modern scientific activities and outlooks.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2007 Society for Comparative Study of Society and History