The #SciArtSeptember prompt is weeping so here is my weeping willow and salicylate cyanotype!
Willow has been used used for medicinal purposes for 1000s of years; cures using willow appear in the writings of various ancient Greek scholars & infusions of willow bark were used traditionally by Cherokee & other Indigenous peoples of NA for fever & other medicinal purposes.
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#sciart #printmaking #chemistry #salix #weepingWillow #willow #histsci #MastoArt
that a tree which likes moisture, might cure malarial fever, which flares up in humid areas.
After more than 3 months of drying a pound of willow branches outside a baker’s oven
& then pulverized them into powder, he tested this hypothesis by taking some dissolved in liquid when he had a fever. He was delighted to find it soothed his fever. He proceeded to use willow bark to treat his 50 parishioners, & then announced his discovery in a letter in 1763 to the President of the Royal Society.
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was the first to isolate the active ingredient salicylate. It wasn’t adopted by the medical establishment during his lifetime. More than 100 years later, chemists Felix Hoffmann & Arthur Eichengrün developed a less corrosive compound of salicylic acid, acetylate salicylate in 1897 marketed by the Bayer Company as aspirin in 1899.
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@minouette ...or perhaps he had heard about the "toothache tree" of the Native American peoples and tested it out for himself. 🤔
Native American Technology & Art: a topically organized educational web site emphasizing the Eastern Woodlands region, organized into categories of Beadwork, Birds & Feathers, Clay & Pottery, Leather & Clothes, Metalwork, Plants & Trees, Porcupine Quills, Stonework & Tools, Weaving & Cordage, Games & Toys and Food & Recipes. Find simple instructional information about how these materials are used by Natives, and detailed background on the history and development of these kinds of Native technologies, showing both the change and continuity from pre-contact times to the present. NativeTech is dedicated to disconnecting the term 'primitive' from peoples' perceptions of Native American technology and art.
@minouette Yeah! It's amazing how much knowledge "modern" culture missed out on (and probably continues to) because we've discounted whole regions and peoples.
Thanks for the histories - I really enjoy them!
@wcbdata thanks!
We do absolutely have a terrible habit of deciding things are “discovered” long after all sorts of excluded people(s) have knowledge of them.
Ele Willoughby, PhD
Bill, organizer of stuff
Jorge Bejarano