Lucas Richert

University of Wisconsin-Madison

-
Research Fellow

Roots & Remedies: Chemical Futures, Plant Pasts

This project will provide a vivid global journey into the healing power of plants and nature, and share how botanical wonders have shaped health, medicine, and society. Roots & Remedies will explore the intertwined histories of plants and pharmaceuticals and changes that they have inspired across centuries and cultures. Readers and listeners will be exposed to the wide-ranging role of plants in traditional healing rituals and their controversial use in medical practice; how colonial encounters and global trade routes spread medicinal plants across continents, changing entire pharmacopoeias; the role of companies like Parke, Davis & Co. in commercializing plant-based drugs, and the ethical and economic issues surrounding it; and a modern-day view of how natural medicines are making a resurgence in the form of CBD, psychedelics, and herbal supplements. Altogether, the project will provide insight into the development of a "molecular vision of life" that transformed (post)colonial bioprospecting worldwide, reshaping the relationship between Western and indigenous worldviews. 

Image
Babak Ashrafi, Jan Golinski, Keith Wailoo, and Tom Misa at the Presidents of AAHM, HSS, and SHOT event. Held online on September 14, 2020

Babak Ashrafi, Jan Golinski, Keith Wailoo, and Tom Misa at the Presidents of AAHM, HSS, and SHOT event. Held online on September 14, 2020.