ABSTRACT:
Exotic Abortifacients is a passage from Londa Schiebinger's book, Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World. In this moving account of the abuses of indigenous Caribbean people and African slaves, Schiebinger describes how slave women brewed the “peacock flower” into an abortifacient, to ensure that they would bear no children into oppression. Yet, impeded by trade winds of prevailing opinion, knowledge of West Indian abortifacients never flowed into Europe. A rich history of discovery and loss, Plants and Empire explores the movement, triumph, and extinction of knowledge in the course of encounters between Europeans and the Caribbean populations.
Discussant Margaret Carlyle's research focuses on the production of scientific, medical, and technological knowledge in seventeenth- and eigheenth-century France and its colonies. She is interested in the enterprising efforts of women and other "invisible assistants" in forging scientific careers, both outside of and within institutional settings. Margaret is currently completing a cultural history of Enlightenment anatomy stemming from her doctoral thesis completed at McGill University and a history of obstetrical technology in early modern Europe.