title: The long postwar and the politics of penicillin: early circulation and smuggling in Spain, 1944-1954.
abstract: In this paper I explore the early circulation of penicillin. I review the early distribution in Spain of a scarce product, reflect on the available sources about the illegal penicillin trade and discuss some cases of smuggling. I argue the early distribution of penicillin involved time and geography, a particular chronology of post Second World War geopolitics. Penicillin practices and experiences belong to this period, in a dictatorship that tolerated smuggling and illegal trade of other products, some, like penicillin, produced in neighbouring countries. As a commodity that crossed borders, penicillin, transiting between the law and hidden trade, between countries and social domains--between war fronts and from a war front to an urban site to be sold--reveals practices of the early years of prosperity in the 1950s. These transits were permanent tests of a society based on taxes and exchanges, law and bureaucracy, control, discipline and the creation of standards.
authors.forename: María Jesús
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Santesmases
mesh_terms: D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents / Q000191:economics / Q000266:history*; D003132:Commerce; D064423:Drug Trafficking / Q000191:economics / Q000266:history*; D049673:History, 20th Century; D010406:Penicillins / Q000191:economics / Q000266:history*; D011057:Politics; D013030:Spain; D013660:Taxes
chemical_list: D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents; D010406:Penicillins