Exotic abortifacients and lost knowledge.

摘要

Altogether European bioprospectors identified eight abortifacients used by Amerindians and African slaves living in the Caribbean in this period. Merian's passage is remarkable for several reasons. The German-born Merian was one of very few European women to travel at this time in pursuit of science. Others voyaged, but as lovers, daughters, or wives to where their male companions happened to take them.The French Jeanne Baret, for example, became the first woman to circumnavigate the globe in 1776, but she sailed disguised as the male valet to Philibert Commerson, the ship's botanist and the father of her illegitimate child. Merian, by contrast, voyaged from Amsterdam to the "Wild Coast" of South America in 1699 at the age of 52 years accompanied only by her daughter and in pursuit of her own scientific and economic interests.