The “Controversial Cundurango Cure”

Medical professionalization and the global circulation of drugs

Dados Bibliográficos

ID14671069
AutoresElisa Sevilla (0000-0001-7268-8973, Universidad San Francisco de Quito, autor correspondente), Almudena Sevilla (0000-0003-0075-3291, Universidad San Francisco de Quito, autor correspondente)
Ano2020
Volume33
Fascículo4
Páginas423-440
Data de publicação2020-12-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoScience in Context (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0269-8897 • E-ISSN: 1474-0664
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0269889721000144
PMID35086592
OpenAlexW4210303112
IdiomaEN
Referências citadas13

Argument This article examines the medical and political discussions regarding a controversial medicinal bark from Ecuador – cundurango – that was actively sponsored by the Ecuadorian government as a new botanical cure for cancer in the late nineteenth century United States and elsewhere. The article focuses on the commercial and diplomatic interests behind the public discussion and advertising techniques of this drug. It argues that diverse elements – including the struggle for positioning scientific societies and the disapproval of the capacities of Ecuadorian doctors, US abolitionist history, regional and local political struggles – played a role in the quackery accusations against cundurango and its promoters. The development and international trade of this remedy offer interesting insights into the global history of drugs, particularly how medical knowledge was challenged during a period when scientific medicine was struggling for hegemony. It explores how newspapers expanded “the public interest” in a possible cancer cure

Newspaper · Politics · Professionalization · Quackery · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · History of Medicine and Tropical Health · History of Science and Natural History