Historia y enseñanza de las ciencias : nuevas perspectivas y oportunidades para la colaboración

Tanto desde la didáctica de las ciencias como desde los estudios históricos y sociales sobre ciencia se ha apuntado la necesidad de establecer marcos de diálogo y colaboración entre investigadores en didáctica, historiadores de la ciencia y el profesorado de ciencias. Al mismo tiempo, desde la historia de la ciencia han sido varios los trabajos de investigación realizados en torno a la ciencia en las aulas. Entre ellos encontramos el estudio de las biografías del profesorado de ciencias y de los instrumentos científicos empleados en contextos educativos. Las posibilidades didácticas de estos trabajos son hoy un área aún por explorar. El presente trabajo recoge algunas de las nuevas perspect…

Living in a Toxic World, 1800–2000

Constructing the Centre from the Periphery

During recent decades, scientific activity in the Spanish Enlightenment has attracted the attention of many historians of science. The policies of enlightened governments have been regarded as an important step in the process of modernisation of eighteenth-century Spanish society. At the beginning of that century, a new Bourbon dynasty was established in Spain and its policies have been regarded — mainly by conservative historians — as an attempt to introduce “foreign” ideas and practices into Spain. These policies have also been considered as a major effort to “modernise” a supposedly traditionalist country isolated from the rest of Europe and under the control of the powerful Catholic Chu…

Resistencias, novedades y negociaciones : la terminología química durante la primera mitad del siglo XIX en España

En este artículo se analiza la nueva terminología química en España durante la primera mitad del siglo XIX. Pretendemos mostrar que el estudio de la historia de la terminología permite conocer mejor los mecanismos de negociación, apropiación y resistencia de las comunidades locales, y ofrece nuevas claves para repensar las relaciones entre centro y periferias científicas. Las fuentes principales del estudio son los manuales de química publicados entre 1788 y 1845 en España. Estructuraremos la discusión en torno a cuatro temas que forman parte de las cuestiones generalmente analizadas en los estudios sobre la circulación del conocimiento: apropiaciones, controversias, novedades y resistencia…

Viajes a Francia para el estudio de la química, 1770-1833

[ES] Los viajes científicos a Francia durante último tercio del siglo XVIII y el primero del siglo XIX son generalmente considerados, por diversas razones, como una importante cuestión en el desarrollo de la ciencia española de ese período. Los viajes científicos de los pensionados y comisionados de la Ilustración suelen estudiarse como un vehículo de transmisión de nuevas ideas científicas. Por el contrario, el exilio de autores afrancesados y liberales suele valorarse negativamente, como una de las causas de la decadencia de la ciencia española del primer tercio del siglo XIX. En este trabajo se pretende ofrecer un marco general para el estudio de estos viajes y presentar algunas de las p…

From arsenic to DDT: Pesticides, Fascism and the invisibility of toxic risks in the early years of Francoist Spain (1939-1953)

This paper reviews the way in which Spanish agriculture climbed onto the pesticide treadmill. We claim that Fascist policies and expert advice assembled in the early 1940s accelerated the introduction of pesticides into Spanish agriculture and promoted the emergence of the Spanish pesticide industry in the times of autarky. Agricultural engineers were the key protagonists in this process, but other human and non-human actors also played a pivotal role: a new pest (the Colorado beetle), Francoist politicians, farmers, landowners and industry managers. Our focus is on the use of pesticides against the Colorado beetle (the main threat to the potato crop), and the transition from arsenical pest…

Spanish Chemistry Textbooks During Late 18th Century: Building up a New Genre of Scientific Literature

Science and technology in the European periphery: Some historiographical reflections

Book Review: Lavoisier in Italia

Lead Poisoning in France around 1840: Managing Proofs and Uncertainties in Laboratories, Courtrooms, and Workplaces.

This article reviews one of the most famous cases of lead poisoning in France, the Ponchon affair, which occurred in 1843 during a crucial period for French toxicology. The trial attracted public attention and inflamed controversy among medical and legal experts. The debate involved toxicological methods and their reliability, and gave rise to more general questions about the value of expert evidence, the way it was presented in court, and its relationship to other forms of legal evidence. I begin with a general overview of lead poisoning and toxicological research on lead compounds around 1840. I then discuss different toxicological proofs employed for detecting or preventing lead poisonin…

Sabers en acció: una nova història dela ciència, la tecnologia i la medicina

In this paper, we present the conception, methodology, and articulation of an informative project about the history of science, technology and medicine. It is an open-access source available online and it is entitled Knowledge in Action. In this paper, we present the conception, methodology, and articulation of an informative project about the history of science, technology and medicine. It is an open-access source available online and it is entitled Knowledge in Action.

Looking for an Order of Things: Textbooks and Chemical Classifications in Nineteenth Century France

The purpose of this paper is to reconsider the issue of the creativity of textbook writing by exploring the links between nineteenth-century French textbooks and the quest for a classification of elements. The first section presents the elegant combination of didactic and chemical constraints invented by eighteenth-century chemists: the order of learning - from the known to the unknown - and the order of things - from the simple to the complex - were one and the same. In section two we argue that the alleged coincidence did not help the authors of elementary textbooks required for the new schools set up by the French revolution. Hence the variety of classifications adopted in the early nine…

Chemistry, microscopy and smell: bloodstains and nineteenth-century legal medicine

This paper analyses the development of three methods for detecting bloodstains during the first half of the nineteenth-century in France. After dealing with the main problems in detecting bloodstains, the paper describes the chemical tests introduced in the mid-1820s. Then the first uses of the microscope in the detection of bloodstains around 1827 are discussed. The most controversial method is then examined, the smell test introduced by Jean-Pierre Barruel in 1829, and the debates which took place in French academies and learned societies during ensuing years are surveyed. Moving to the courtrooms a review is conducted of how the different methods were employed in criminal trials. By revi…

Book Review

Amedeo Avogadro. Lettere

Mirades sobre l'alquímia a la València baixmedieval: un procés judicial sobre la producció de l'or potable (1440-1445)

En el present article es fa un recorregut per la pràctica i els practicants de l'alquímia a la València medieval, i en particular s'analitza un plet que va enfrontar un client amb l'apotecari Joan Fuster per la fabricació d'or potable. Hi participaren en el judici un grup de físics perits.

Alessandro Pastore, Veleno. Credenze, crimini, saperi nell'Italia moderna. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2010. 254 pp., ill., ISBN 978-88-15-13873-6.

Louis Jacques Thenard's Chemistry Courses at the Collège de France, 1804–1835

This article is concerned with the public courses and lecture demonstrations given by Louis Jacques Thenard at the College de France during the first decades of the nineteenth century. The expectations and needs of Thenard's auditors will be studied in order to understand the role played by chemistry courses at the College in the context of the growing and changing Parisian teaching market during the first third of the nineteenth century. The preparation and performance of lecture demonstrations was the main driving force of several major changes in the premises and the personnel associated with the chair of chemistry. Our analysis of the parallel process of expansion and functional differe…

Fingerprints across the transatlantic world: the parallel lives of Juan Vucetich and Federico Olóriz

Este trabajo fue posible en parte gracias al apoyo de los proyectos de investigación HAR2012- 36204-C02-01 y HAR2015-66364-C2-2-P («Expertos, regulaciones y controversias públicas en la España del siglo XX»), PICT-2015-2314 («Policía, redes transnacionales y prácticas delictivas en la Argentina, siglos XIX y XX») y del Instituto de Ciencias de la Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento.

Viajes a Francia para el estudio de la Química, 1770 y 1833

-Jose.R.Bertomeu@uv.es Los viajes científicos a Francia durante último tercio del siglo XVIII y el primero del siglo XIX son generalmente considerados, por diversas razones, como una importante cuestión en el desarrollo de la ciencia española de ese período. Los viajes científicos de los pensionados y comisionados de la Ilustración suelen estudiarse como un vehículo de transmisión de nuevas ideas científicas. Por el contrario, el exilio de autores afrancesados y liberales suele valorarse negativamente, como una de las causas de la decadencia de la ciencia española del primer tercio del siglo XIX. En este trabajo se pretende ofrecer un marco general para el estudio de estos viajes y presenta…

Mapping the Teaching of History of Chemistry in Europe

Recent developments in the field of history of chemistry have introduced new topics, challenges, and connections to a broad range of scientific, political, cultural, economic, and environmental issues. New audiences for the history of chemistry have emerged along with new topics, protagonists, spaces, and historical narratives. This paper summarizes the main results of a recent survey to map the current situation of the teaching of history of chemistry in Europe. We review how and where history of chemistry is taught in Europe, considering not only graduate students in science programs, but also other audiences such as science teachers, and the general public. This paper also provides updat…

Science and law in the time of cholera: the mystery of the biscuits in Torroja (1865)

By focussing on a case of collective poisoning in 1865, four features of forensic cultures are analysed: technologies for detection, authorized voices, regulations in action and the predominant social anxieties. Local newspapers and archival documents kept in the medical academies of Barcelona and Madrid are analysed. The analysis shows the tensions between various types of proof employed in legal medicine and the ambiguities between epidemic diseases and poisoning accidents. In the first section, I review the fears caused by the cholera epidemic in 1865, which was the first explanation of the accident. The changes of popular perception are also discussed by analysing contemporary newspaper…

Enseñanza de las ciencias : revista de investigación y experiencias didácticas

Se discuten algunas de las conclusiones de varios trabajos históricos recientes sobre Amedeo Avogadro y la teoría atómica del siglo XIX. A través de pequeños extractos de publicaciones famosas de Avogadro, se analizan las características principales de sus aportaciones a la teoría atómica del siglo XIX. También se analizan los principales métodos de cálculo de pesos atómicos de esos años y se discute el papel de las ideas de Avogadro en este tema. Estas conclusiones se contrastan con la imagen que actualmente los libros de texto dan acerca de este autor. Finalmente, esta última comparación conduce a una discusión sobre el papel de la historia de la ciencia en los libros de texto. This paper…

La actividad científica en España bajo el reinado de José I (1808-1813) : un estudio de las instituciones, autores y publicaciones científicas a traves de la documentación del gobierno afrancesado

Classrooms, Salons, Academies, and Courts: Mateu Orfila (1787–1853) and Nineteenth-Century French Toxicology

AbstractThis paper analyses the connections between nineteenth-century courtrooms, academies, and laboratories by focusing on the life and works of Mateu Orfila (1787–1853), one of the most famous nineteenth-century toxicologists. At the apex of his career, Orfila moved regularly between his laboratory and his chair at the Paris Faculty of Medicine to meetings of the Academy of Medicine, and the courtrooms in which he was frequently called upon as an expert witness in murder trials. Tracing Orfila's biographical path, this paper deals with four main sites of nineteenth-century toxicology: classrooms, salons, academies, and courtrooms. These sites are understood as both tangible places, whos…

Bibliografía Histórica sobre la Ciencia y la Técnica en España. 1994

Repertori de bibliografia històrica sobre la ciència i la tècnica a Espanya editada en 1994. //. Repertorio de bibliografía histórica sobre la ciencia y la técnica en España editada en 1994.

Pedro Gutiérrez Bueno (1743-1822) y las relaciones entre la química y la farmacia durante el último tercio del siglo XVIII

This paper is part of a general research project on the role that chemistry played in transforming experimental pharmacology during nineteenth-century Spain. Within this general framework, this paper deals with the main characteristics of chemistry textbooks written by Pedro Gutiérrez Bueno (1745-1822), a pharmacist who taught chemistry in several institutions during the late eighteenth century. In an earlier paper, we have analysed the intended public of the first edition of Gutiérrez Bueno`s textbook. This paper deals with the changing institutional context in which the second edition was published. This issue is closely connected with substantial transformations in the relationship betwe…

Katherine Watson, Poisoned lives: English poisoners and their victims, London and New York, Hambledon and London, 2004, pp. xiv, 268, illus., £19.99 (hardback 1-85283-379-4).

This book provides a fresh look at the social history of poisons and poisoners based on around 500 cases of criminal poisoning that occurred in England between 1750 and 1914. Watson analyses not only published sources but also the rich documents stored at the National Archives at Kew. As a consequence, the study offers reliable statistical data about poisoning and includes a broad range of cases, not only the most famous and popular poisoning trials. First of all, Watson describes the main poisons employed in the nineteenth century, their effects on human bodies and the three ways of detecting them: clinical symptoms, post-mortem autopsies and chemical tests. The different value of these si…

Paul J. Crutzen: A Pioneer on Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Change in the Anthropocene

The book is part of the Springer series on Nobel Laureates whose main aim is to present the life and work of distinguished twentieth-century scholars. Each author is presented by a colleague, in th...