Museum review

Reflections on museums and exhibits featuring alcohol & drugs.

“In the footsteps of the poppy”: a new virtual exhibition by the National Pharmaceutical Museum

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The Netherlands’ Nationaal Farmaceutisch Museum has launched their virtual exhibition on the history of opium and opiates curated by digital archivist Rimke van der Bij in partnership with experienced academics in the histories of drugs and pharmaceuticals, Toine Pieters and Stephen Snelders.

A Tale of Success and Exchange: the Stories of Chinese Pharmacy Students in the Early 20th Century at the University of Wisconsin

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Despite being thousands of miles across the Pacific Ocean, at the turn of the 20th century, the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Pharmacy became a hotspot for Chinese students interested in researching medicinal plants in China. Under the advisement of Dr. Edward Kremers, these Chinese students brought their knowledge of medicine to American pharmaceutical research with a broader goal of equalizing China and its traditional knowledge on an international stage. PhD student JJ Strange recounts the stories of these students, found in the AIHP archive.

Situation Report: Conducting Research at the U.S. National Archives in College Park, Maryland (Archives II)

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Editor’s Note: This situation report provides an overview of the current protocols at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland (Archives II). Please note this refers to Archives II only, as at early April 2022, and may be subject to change. Please check the NARA website for updates and communicate with the archives before making any definitive research plans. For further information and updates see: https://www.archives.gov/college-park.

Many thanks to Bill McAllister for agreeing to share his personal experiences/correspondence with the Points audience.

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Whitewashing History: Osaka’s Tanabe Mitsubishi Pharma Museum

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Editor’s Note: Today’s post comes from Dr. Miriam Kingsberg Kadia, Associate Professor of History at University of Colorado Boulder and author of the books Moral Nation: Modern Japan and Narcotics in Global History and Into the Field: Human Scientists of Transwar Japan. Here she continues her fascinating museum reviews with an examination of a museum in Osaka from her recent trip to Japan.

The Tanabe Mitsubishi Pharma Historical Museum (Kusuri no Doshōmachi Shiryōkan) is located in Osaka, a half-hour ramble from the main train station. It lies in the heart of the city’s traditional merchant quarter (still dotted with preserved architecture dating to the late nineteenth century). The museum occupies the second floor of the Tanabe Mitsubishi Pharma Company headquarters. It is open from 10:00 a.m. to 5 p.m. on all weekdays excluding holidays. Advance online reservations are required for entry. Admission is free, the staff is welcoming and helpful, and all films, exhibits, and interactive materials are bilingual. At the time of my visit (around 2 p.m. on a Wednesday in early January), I was the only guest.  

As the museum narrates, Tanabe Mitsubishi Pharma is both a new and an old entity. The company acquired its current form in 2007 as the result of a merger. However, its origins date back to 1604, when Osaka-based merchant Tanabe Gohei received a permit from the Tokugawa shogun (then ruler of Japan) to peddle medicines. In 1678, his grandson opened the family’s first shop (Tanabeya) and began selling medicinal products imported from the Philippines. At the time, Japan was under a strict policy of seclusion, and Tanabe’s foray into international commerce must have required considerable negotiations. (Unfortunately, the process by which he obtained his permit is not elucidated.) Tanabeya truly thrived during the Meiji period (1868-1912), when, in advance of most competitors, it began providing Western medicines in addition to traditional Sinic treatments. Within a short while, the former dominated sales. Another major period of growth took place during World War I, when Germany, then the global leader in developing and manufacturing pharmaceuticals, became unable to export its products. Local concerns including Tanabeya stepped into the breach and greatly expanded their market share.

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The Room Where It Really Happened: The Fraunces Tavern Museum

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Editor’s Note: Today’s post comes from contributing editor Dr. Miriam Kingsberg Kadia , professor of history at the University of Colorado, Boulder. In it, she continues her series of museum reviews, all of which you can see here. 

The Fraunces Tavern Museum is located in lower Manhattan, New York. Conveniently, given the difficulty of driving in the area, it is less than five minutes’ walk from numerous subway stops, including Staten Island Ferry (the 1 line), Wall St. (2 and 3), Bowling Green (4 and 5), Whitehall St. (R and W), and Broad St. (J and Z). Adult admission is $7, but holders of a New York City library card are entitled to two free tickets per month. A visit can be expected to take about one hour. At 3 p.m. on a Monday, I had most of the galleries to myself, but 25,000 patrons are said to pass through annually. The museum is open weekdays from noon to 5 p.m. and weekends from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

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The Fraunces Tavern Museum

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Crime and Punishment, But No Victims: The Mob Museum of Las Vegas

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Editor’s Note: Today’s post comes from contributing editor Dr. Miriam Kingsberg Kadia. In it, she continues her series of museum reviews with a visit to the Mob Museum in Las Vegas. Photos by Dr. Kadia. 

Although most tourists probably don’t associate Las Vegas with museums, the city is in fact home to some noteworthy institutions. One interesting example is the Mob Museum, located downtown in a former courthouse. At $26.95 for out-of-state adult admission ($16.95 for Nevada residents with ID) entry is not cheap, but perhaps a bargain compared with the casinos up the street. One might easily spend as much as three hours perusing the three stories of exhibits and basement reconstructions of a speakeasy and distillery.

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The Mob Museum of Las Vegas

The exhibition begins on the third floor with a discussion of the origins of the Mob in the late nineteenth century. Curators narrate: whereas most immigrants to the U.S. were “good,” “a few thought they would choose a shortcut to the American dream.” Evoking Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign comments about “bad hombres,” the museum’s casual scapegoating of Irish, Italian, and Jewish foreigners for mobsterism feels not only misleading but dangerous.

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Opioids, Addiction, Podcasts, and How You Can Help Points

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science history institute The Science History Institute, formed by the merger of the Chemical Heritage Foundation and the Life Sciences Foundation, is a fantastic resource for those interested in researching the history of chemistry, chemical engineering, and the life sciences – topics that are necessary if we’re to understand the role that intoxicants have played in our lives.

Located in Philadelphia with outposts in Europe and California, the Science History Institute has an archive and library, an acclaimed museum, and a variety of fellowship programs that are definitely worth a look.

Through Distillations, their outlet for podcasts, a magazine, videos and blogs, the organization is also a publishing powerhouse. Check out their remarkable longform story on opioids, and subscribe to their podcast. The Institute is launching a new series on the history of addiction treatment, including The Narcotic Farm, Therapeutic Communities like Synanon, methadone maintenance, and buprenorphine/Suboxone. It’s definitely worth a listen.

One more thing: As we mentioned earlier, there’s a lot of excitement around here. Points and the ADHS’s journal, the Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, are both working hard to increase and improve our reach over the next few years, with the assistance of the University of Chicago Press.

But we need your help.

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Drugs on Display in Japan: The Daiichi Sankyō Pharmaceutical Museum

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by Miriam Kingsberg Kadia, Contributing Editor

Daiichi Sankyō is a pharmaceutical corporation based in Japan, with more than fifty offices around the world. In 2012, the company opened the Kusuri Myūjiamu [Pharmaceutical Museum] to showcase its century-plus history, successes, and future ambitions in drug development.
east-asiaI visited the museum one rainy Friday morning in early June 2017. The museum is located in the Daiichi Sankyō building in downtown Tokyo, with the main exhibit hall on the second floor. Admission is free. Signs posted outside suggest allocating one hour for a visit. Guests are asked to leave bags in coin lockers outside the main hall, and photographs are not permitted.

Upon arrival, the visitor is handed a large plastic button. The button is carried from station to station and placed on portals to activate auditory content. At the entry terminal, the visitor inputs some demographic information and selects a language for presentation (options include English, Japanese, and Chinese). The button subsequently activates speech in the language of choice for each subsequent display. Inasmuch as I appreciated the unique, almost futuristic design of the terminals, when a large number of patrons entered at once, the general noise level of the room rose to a point where the vocalization became almost inaudible.

The text of the exhibit is pitched at about the level of a Japanese middle-school biology course (which perhaps explains why most of the visitors I saw were schoolgirls in uniform, diligently filling out worksheets). Daiichi Sankyō emphasizes the scientific nature of its production process by inundating the viewer with chemical formulas and structures, experimental setups, and clips of researchers and pharmacists at work. The somewhat dry presentation is enlivened at points with interactive opportunities such as multiple-choice quizzes.

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