ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

From Garden to Lab: Medicinal Plants and the Rise of Pharmaceutical Science in Wisconsin, 1895-1935

• In Event: Roots and Remedies: Global Histories of the Pharmaceuticalization of Herbal Knowledge I

English Abstract

In 1895, Dr. Edward Kremers, director of the University of Wisconsin Department of Pharmacy, initiated a formal collaboration with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to investigate drugs of plant origin—then central to therapeutic practice. This effort led to the creation of a medicinal plant garden at Camp Randall in 1909 and culminated in the establishment of the Wisconsin Pharmaceutical Experiment Station in 1913, the first such institution in the United States. Modeled after agricultural experiment stations, the UW and USDA Pharmaceutical Station helped institutionalize pharmaceutical research, production, and distribution within a state-supported framework.

Drawing on archival sources—including university minutes, correspondence, internal reports, and contemporary news coverage—this paper reconstructs the Station’s role in transforming plant-based therapeutics into standardized pharmaceutical commodities. It situates the Station within broader processes of pharmaceuticalization, bioprospecting, and the commodification of medicinal plants, examining how the alkaloid paradigm shaped research priorities, how herbalism was reconfigured into phytotherapy, and how Indigenous and traditional knowledge systems were selectively appropriated or marginalized.

By analyzing this rare and underexamined institutional model, this paper contributes to broader discussions on how state-supported infrastructures shaped the pharmaceuticalization of plant-based medicine. It emphasizes the transformation of herbal remedies into standardized commodities through scientific and regulatory frameworks and engages with the intersection of agricultural and pharmaceutical research. While much existing scholarship emphasizes colonial extraction, transnational bioprospecting, or corporate pharmaceutical development, this paper highlights a domestic, publicly funded initiative that operated at the nexus of science, public health, and state infrastructure. Through a microhistorical lens, it reveals how medicinal plant research was formalized, standardized, and distributed within a regional context—yet with implications for national pharmaceutical norms.

Author

• Lucas Richert, University of Wisconsin–Madison