Dutch Transatlantic Medicine Trade in the Eighteenth Century under the Cover of the West India Company (review)

A. M. G. Rutten. Dutch Transatlantic Medicine Trade in the Eighteenth Century under the Cover of the West India Company. Rotterdam: Erasmus, 2000. 168 pp. Ill. Gld. 59.50; E 27.00 (softcover, 90-5235-148-1).

While still rare, studies of the international drug trade before the modern era are now slowly providing a base for some quantitative and qualitative comparison by historians of pharmacy, therapy, and commerce. The work of John Worth Estes and David Cowen on North America before 1900 has now been extended to the West Indies. The present study by A. M. G. Rutten, a Dutch historian of pharmacy and a trained pharmacologist, of the trade into the Caribbean and Africa by the Dutch West India Company (WIC) is an invaluable addition to a small but important historical corpus. Using the extraordinary archives and ledgers of the company as his main primary sources, Rutten can present a far more focused and detailed account of shipments into the West Indies and the Dutch holdings in West Africa for the period 1600-1800 than previously available (or even imaginable).

While Rutten discusses, at some length, exports of materia medica to Europe, this work is particularly valuable for his examination of the types, quantities, and occasionally prices of pharmaceuticals shipped into the tropics, usually assembled and paid for by the WIC in provisioning both their European employees and the slaves at their stations. Since the Dutch in the Caribbean, as in the East Indies, did not pursue settlement by their own citizens for demographic reasons, we can get a fairly good idea of the population base for whom these drugs, almost all belonging to the European materia medica of the period, were intended. This drug trade was at (least in intention) a monopoly by the WIC during the period and in the places where it held power, until displaced by the English and the French during the eighteenth century. In addition, and as importantly, we gain insight into the pervasive gray economy of drug-smuggling by Dutch and foreign traders and interlopers. In the medical field, these traders included a good number of Jewish families who established their own networks reaching from Brazil, from which they had been expelled in the 1640s, to Boston, London, and the European continent from Amsterdam to Leipzig.

With the Dutch slaving and trading entrepôt of Curaçao as a hub, the shipping networks followed the main trade routes, including the golden triangle between Europe, Africa, and the Americas (the grote Vaart), intercoastal and interisland traffic (the kleine Vaart), and direct trade between Amsterdam and the islands. Drug shipments into the Dutch possessions on the northern coast of South America (Guiana and Belize) were more closely restricted to the needs of the Dutch stations and plantations with their large slave populations, and a similar pattern is seen for the Dutch forts on the African gold coast.

In addition to providing a rich store of tables in the body of the work and as appendices, which offer information and some time-series on materia medica sent as simples and compounds, Rutten discusses aspects of drug therapy and quality--including adulteration and spoilage during shipment, indications for use, and the type and origin of company surgeons attracted to service in the WIC. Many of the latter came from northern Germany and some, as we now know, migrated to the North American colonies. Of particular interest is Rutten's considerable knowledge of the medical care provided for slaves and of several of their occupational diseases, on which he has published a number of studies. His conclusions on the almost exclusive use of European remedies despite the large quantity of native substances sent to Europe, where they were processed before being used domestically or reexported, parallel those made for North America. This therapeutic...