Dr Laura Dawes ‘Hedgerows for victory! Wild plant gathering to keep the wartime medicine cabinet stocked’ (new date)

Hedgerows for Victory! Wild plant gathering to keep the wartime medicine cabinet stocked.  With the pharmaceutical industry dominated by Germany and Japan the sole manufacturer of bacteriological agar, Britain in World War II faced a national crisis: how to keep the medicine cabinet stocked?  The answer was ‘Hedgerows for Victory!’ - the wild gathering of plants and seaweed by volunteers - to provide raw materials to British drug companies.  Medical historian Laura Dawes tells the story of scientific inventiveness and the girl guides, boy scouts, and ladies of the Women's Institute who rambled for Britain.

Biography

Laura Dawes is a medical historian and author, most recently of Fighting Fit: The Wartime Battle for Britain's Health. After stints at Oxford, Harvard, and Cambridge, she now calls Canberra home.