R.M. Herzig

‘Burning the Candle at Both Ends’: Contextualizing the Rise of Stimulants in US Higher Education

R.M. Herzig

Bates College

rherzig@bates.edu

Stimulant use, particularly among 18-22 year-old student populations, has attracted considerable attention in both clinical medicine and the medical humanities. Much of that discussion has focused on adjudicating clinical and bioethical distinctions between therapeutic applications of these drugs and elective enhancement. This paper describes the uses of stimulants on college campuses prior to the emergence of this therapy vs. enhancement dichotomy. Focusing on early uses of the synthetic amphetamine known as Benzedrine, the paper draws on evidence from US medical journals and college student newspapers to show that mental enhancement was an explicit part of its appeal from the outset. The paper further argues that US college students’ growing interest in using medication to increase mental output signaled broader shifts in cultural values, including in the perceived purposes of higher education. Tracing the social history of this medical technology thus illuminates not only changing conceptions of health and illness, but also the still unfolding biomedicalization of US colleges and universities.

BIOGRAPHY

Historian Rebecca M. Herzig is Professor and Chair of Gender and Sexuality Studies at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, USA. She is the author or editor of several books, including Suffering for Science: Reason and Sacrifice in Modern America, The Nature of Difference: Sciences of Race in the United States from Jefferson to Genomics (with Evelynn Hammonds) and the series, Feminist Technosciences  (with Banu Subramaniam). Herzig’s most recent monograph, Plucked, was named a “Best Book of the Year” by the Economist magazine. Herzig’s writing has appeared in Science, The Lancet, Academic Medicine, and Social Science and Medicine, among other journals, and her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Macarthur Foundation, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Herzig has served as an elected member of the executive councils of the Society for the Social Studies of Science, the Society for the History of Technology, and the International Committee for the History of Technology, among other professional and community board roles. Herzig is also a frequent media commentator on issues pertaining to the social dimensions of science, technology, and medicine.