Paula S. De Vos

I am applying for an ACLS fellowship in order to prepare a book manuscript for publication. The book is based on my dissertation, which traces the development of pharmacy from an early modern "art" to a modern "science." The book examines four themes in particular, pharmacy regulation, business practices, the preparation of medicines, and the cultural role of medicine in Mexican society, and shows how each underwent a fundamental transformation from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries, through which pharmacy emerged as a modern, scientific discipline. This study is significant not only because it treats a little-known area of Latin American history, but also because it challenges traditional assumptions of Spanish "backwardness" and lack of scientific innovation.