Rentetzi Maria
National Technical University of Athens, Greece.
Ann Sci. 2011 Jul;68(3):375-99. doi: 10.1080/00033790.2011.587999.
This article discusses the intersection of science and culture in the marketplace and explores the ways in which radium quack and medicinal products were packaged and labelled in the early twentieth century US. Although there is an interesting growing body of literature by art historians on package design, historians of science and medicine have paid little to no attention to the ways scientific and medical objects that were turned into commodities were packaged and commercialized. Thinking about packages not as mere containers but as multifunctional tools adds to historical accounts of science as a sociocultural enterprise and reminds us that science has always been part of consumer culture. This paper suggests that far from being receptacles that preserve their content and facilitate their transportation, bottles and boxes that contained radium products functioned as commercial and epistemic devices. It was the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act that enforced such functions. Packages worked as commercial devices in the sense that they were used to boost sales. In addition, 'epistemic' points to the fact that the package is an artefact that ascribes meaning to and shapes its content while at the same time working as a device for distinguishing between patent and orthodox medicines.
本文探讨了市场中科学与文化的交叉点，并探究了20世纪初美国镭庸医药物和医药产品的包装及标签方式。尽管艺术史学家们对包装设计的文献研究日益增多且饶有趣味，但科学和医学史学家们几乎没有关注过那些被转化为商品的科学和医学物品的包装及商业化方式。将包装不仅仅视为容器，而是多功能工具，这丰富了将科学视为社会文化事业的历史叙述，并提醒我们科学一直是消费文化的一部分。本文认为，装有镭产品的瓶子和盒子远非仅仅保存其内容物并便于运输的容器，而是起到了商业和认知工具的作用。1906年的《纯净食品和药品法案》强化了这些功能。包装作为商业工具，用于促进销售。此外，“认知”指的是这样一个事实，即包装是一种人工制品，它赋予其内容物意义并塑造内容物，同时作为区分专利药品和正统药品的工具。
