The Department of Humanities and the Harrell Health Sciences Library at Penn State College of Medicine will present "The Other Drug War: Psychoactive Pharmaceuticals and Addiction in U.S. History," on Wednesday, May 1, from 4 to 5 p.m. The event will take place in Lecture Room C on the sixth floor of the Basic Science Building, Penn State College of Medicine at Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, 700 HMC Crescent Road, Hershey.
David Herzberg, associate professor of history at SUNY-Buffalo, will examine past crises with addictive pharmaceuticals and draw lessons for today.
Herzberg is a historian of drugs and addictive medicines, with a particular interest in pharmaceutical sedatives, stimulants, and narcotics in the 20th century's consumer culture. Among other places, his work has appeared in American Quarterly, the American Journal of Public Health, the Bulletin of the History of Medicine, and in the book "Happy Pills in America: From Miltown to Prozac."
A reception will follow the lecture at 5:15 p.m. in the College of Medicine's Harrell Health Sciences Library, in conjunction with the National Library of Medicine's traveling exhibit "Pick Your Poison: Intoxicating Pleasures and Medical Prescriptions."
Both events are free and open to the public. Preregistration is not required. For more information, readers may email cdeboer@pennstatehealth.psu.edu, or visit http://med.psu.edu/humanities.
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