“Spary is one of the most exciting and original historians of science currently writing. Her new book, Taking Drugs in the Sun King’s Reign, focuses on the ‘drug culture’ present in France from the late seventeenth to the early eighteenth century as the country came to ingest a wide array of exotic substances of medicinal, cosmetic, dietary, recreational, and other uses. Written with flair, cogently argued and methodologically innovative, her study throws fascinating new light on the place of drugs in early modern France and on France’s place in a precociously globalizing world.”

Colin Jones, author of “The Great Nation”