Zachary Dorner

With Merchants of Medicines I sought to write a new history of the British empire in the long eighteenth century emphasizing the centrality of medicines to extractive projects, bound labor, long-distance commerce, and manufacturing. Below, a thread of some arguments:

Including a high praise for Smoke Bellow's new album. Smoke Bellow are a favorite of mine, and I'm sad to see the project come to an end. But they go out on a high note!

also cc: @UChicagoPress

Very grateful that Merchants of Medicines has been selected for the 2024 Kremers Award from the @HistPharm! The work of past winners has been central to my growth as a historian, and I'm honored to now be listed alongside them. Thank you!! aihp.org/dr-zachary-dor…

@SumanSeth42 @HistPharm Thank you! It owes a lot to yours!!

@feyero @recslac I'm going to try! That would be great. Your talk on Friday evening looks excellent. I'm hoping to at least make that.

Excited to write about “Indigeneity and Exotic” for forthcoming Cambridge History of Medicine! My chapter will mostly depend on Ottoman case studies between 1700-1830, but any suggested readings would be great! 🍍

@HistorianDiary @feyero Excellent! I'm contributing a chapter on "The Commercialization of Materia Medica" to the volume.

@feyero Yay! This is already getting more exciting!

And, on a personal note, @josh_levin & @stefanfatsis hearing you talk about DC high school hoops and Powerbar (among other local things) helped humanize the DMV for me when I moved here back in 2018. Thanks for that too!

@josh_levin @stefanfatsis @byjoelanderson An end of an era indeed. Thank you for helping to make Hang Up the wittiest, smartest, and most humane sports show out there. You will all be missed (and appreciated)!

@sethrockman This summer I came across some wool samples in an account book from the Shrewsbury (Shropshire) Foundling Hospital. I'm thinking more about child labor in the next book. Looking forward to reading how you use such sources in Plantation Goods!

One surprise in researching **Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery** was the richness of New England business archives on the material culture of Southern slavery. Here is a pattern book from a R.I. manufacturer in the 1830s specializing in plaids. 1/6

@SumanSeth42 @jaivirdi @maramills This looks great!

@brunellus That's what I've been thinking too. Thanks!!

@ZPDorner Too modern for me, really, but what I see is: ‘Household’, ‘Linen and’, ‘Tenements and Hereditaments’.

I've got a paleography question for anyone still out there. These four words came up in two wills from the 1770s in the section referring to the property of the deceased. Any ideas as to what they are?

lawcha.org/2024/04/02/lab… #FreeEssay alert --Check out the conversation "Coercion and Colonial Science in the Atlantic World"

We definitely get into the "beyond" part, check it out!

To those historians remaining on this platform: I'm looking for the full text of the 1875 San Francisco Opium Den Ordinance for my class on the history of drugs. Does anyone have it or have a lead where I can find it? Many thanks!

Another bit of new work out there today on the @FolgerResearch's Collation Blog. I'm thinking about the many contested definitions of care across 18th-c institutions. folger.edu/blogs/collatio…

Very grateful for a fellowship from the Folger Shakespeare Library that is enabling some research on my next book this spring! I'm excited to start putting some of this research on care work out into the world.

#FolgerFellow Zachary Dorner (@zpdorner @UMDHistory) is a historian of early modern medicine who is interested in the commerce and labor underlying the provision of health.

@sethrockman 2024, truly the year of the apocalypse!

A beautiful sight to behold.

@dartmouthartsci @mattdelmont @dartmouth @roopikarisam Glad to see this great work publicized AND Dartmouth needs to continue exploring its own historical ties to enslavement by joining the Universities Studying Slavery consortium (which this alum and historian thinks is long overdue).