The Circulation of Penicillin in Spain: Health, Wealth and Authority by María Jesús Santesmases

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Circulation of Penicillin in Spain: Health, Wealth and Authority by María Jesús Santesmases Agata Ignaciuk (bio) The Circulation of Penicillin in Spain: Health, Wealth and Authority By María Jesús Santesmases. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Pp. 239. The Circulation of Penicillin in Spain: Health, Wealth and Authority By María Jesús Santesmases. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Pp. 239. With The Circulation of Penicillin in Spain, María Jesús Santesmases of the Institute of Philosophy and Spanish National Research Council has written a pioneering social history that links a gender perspective—usually reserved for histories of medications targeting the female body or mind—with a theoretical articulation of "circulation" as a category of historiographic analysis. Marketed in Spain under Francisco Franco's military and Catholic regime, which rigidly placed women in the reproductive sphere and under the legal surveillance of fathers and husbands, this first antibiotic bore the characteristics attributed to femininity: cleanliness and care. Santesmases explores the experiences of female workers in a penicillin bottling plant, as well as research technicians, such as Sagrario Mochales: a graduate in natural sciences who participated in the antibiotic screening program co-run by Merck and the Compañia Española de Penicilinas y Antibióticos (CEPA) in Madrid from the mid-1950s onward. These stories showcase both obstacles and opportunities for women in scientific and technological spaces in Spain at a time when female labor was not only popular due to a perceived innate capacity for handling delicate products but also for its low cost. An association with female (un/low paid) care work existed. Its symbolism was evident in Spanish antibiotics advertising, projecting the legitimacy of a female presence in the industrial and scientific space, "fitting into the social order while also breaking it" (p. 72). Some women who inhabited this space, such as Sagrario Mochales, avoided the customary dismissal upon marriage by securing a patent (ch. 6). The author cautions that The Circulation of Penicillin in Spain is not a biography, but "a narration on the multitude of places and times that penicillin lived in, and moved through, as if acquiring a life of its own" (p. 200). Circulation, explicitly defined in the final chapter of the book, threads throughout a narrative driven by the quest to capture the drug in motion, in flow. This flow takes place on multiple levels, in multiple directions, and has multiple protagonists. The journeys of penicillin prompted the travel of methods, materials, skills, and people. Some of these travels were elevated to almost mythical status, such as Alexander Fleming's trip to Spain in spring 1948, entertainingly discussed in as the story of a hero touring poverty-stricken Spain—in sharp contrast with the opulence enveloping the visiting scientist (ch. 2). Santesmases argues that mutual cultures of othering were taking place: Fleming the foreign savior, "symbolic supplier," and diplomat; Spanish elites; and the masses, venerating Fleming to the point of collective hysteria—much to the hero's embarrassment. As [End Page 622] Santesmases argues, these otherings facilitated dispersion of the penicillin dream. Thus, as the author emphasizes, circulation took place alongside necessarily asymmetrical geographic distributions of authority. This mobility entailed the selection, transfer, and transformation of knowledges—and also of identities—and therefore takes place not only in space but also time, shifting and swaying during the lifecycle of the drug, from the magic bullet to potential troublemaker in the era of antimicrobial resistance. In tracing this lifecycle, Santesmases enters almost uncharted territory in the social history of pharmaceuticals in Spain, adding new perspectives to increasing scholarly interest in health and health policies under the Franco regime. During its early career, penicillin was a scarce commodity, mostly secured through illegal markets. Availability increased after the late 1950s shift in economic and political strategy, a relinquishing of autarchy and consecutive internationalization. Attempts at national production had started a decade earlier in the late 1940s, when the CEPA and another company, Antibióticos SA, received authorization to become the two domestic manufacturers of penicillin. Domestic production did not initially eliminate the black market but did lower prices. This simultaneous legal and illegal circulation, Santesmases argues, epitomized the corruption of...