Precarious Identities: Poisons and Poisonings as scientific topic 1750-1930

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Bettina Wahrig
• Subject Area: History of Science
• Term: from 2012 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 214100253

This project is performed in cooperation with partners in film/media history and aims at an experimental and conceptual history of poisons and poisonings between 1750 and 1930 in Western Europe. We explore the history of toxicology as an international and interdisciplinary scientific field which is situated between medicine, pharmacy, forensical disciplines and medical police. High-Profile poisoning cases (causes célèbres) were frequently referred to in the general and the scientific public sphere. The scientific, moral, juridical questions of these cases were raised by a variety of discourses (literature, media, film, science) and arguments criss-crossed the disciplinary borders. We find many similarities in the arguments, the concepts and the rhetoric of these different discoursive fields. Although between 1750 and 1930, scientific and experimental methods multiplied and their authority grew, the multiple meanings of poison and related concepts did not diminish, nor did the ambiguity and uncertainty in dealing with poisons and poisonings. We find a vivid international communication, both in the general and the scientific public, a multiplication of messages and rapid knowledge transfer across national and linguistic borders. Yet there are also sigificant differences, e.g. the intense interest in questions of definition in the German-speaking public, the reluctance of English experts to believe in spectacular effects of poisons, and the early onset of critique towards the deleterious effects of industrialisation in the French-speaking public. Poison narratives of the exotic (curare, coca), or of excentric consumption patterns (arsenic eaters) and the longue-durée conceptual pattern of small quantity/enormous effect show that there is an imaginary space around poisons and poisonings which we intend to explore. Poisons are key examples of what has been characterized as precarious substances (Balz / Schwerin / Stoff / Wahrig 2008). For the cooperation with film/media history we add the Kristevan concept of the abject, not understood as a psychoanalytical category, but as an epistemological tool of research.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants