Race, Medicine, & Society Notes - February 13, 2018

Race, Medicine, & Society Notes - February 13, 2018

Topic: Medicine and Slavery

Discussion Questions

• How did the practice of medicine intersect with the institution of slavery? To what extent did medical care enable or facilitate slavery?
• How did the institution of slavery facilitate the development of the medical profession in the United States?
• In what ways was black health comodified? Who benefited from efforts to keep black bodies healthy?
• Did slaves have any agency (power) in these medicalized environments?

Primary Source: Practical Rules for the Management of Negro Slaves in the Sugar Colonies (1803)

Questions:

• What does this document reveal about the relationship between slavery and medicine in the Caribbean?
• How do you connect it to the readings? With what specific passages does it resonate, and why?
• What questions does it raise?

Primary Source - document of the time

Secondary Source - source about the document, not the original (ex: scholarly book)

Group 1:

• Slaves used for capital gain
• Moral obligation to treat well
• Surveillance / control (Wanted to keep non-white population in a condensed area)
• White plantation owners thinking their work is morally correct

Group 2:

• Slaves like machinery
• Assumptions of slave body limitations (overworked)
• Humanized vs Dehumanized
• Narcissistic plantation writers
• Expenditure of slaves lives. If plantation owner recognized this; the slaves might not work as efficiently.

Slave owner in control - made decisions for slaves like medical treatment and discipline.

Medical treatment could have been used to cushion the issue of slavery. The wording of the
primary source discussed in class was worded to make slavery seem not as bad as it was.
Why would anyone publicly say that they’re torturing people? Healthcare and improving
quality of life for slaves was used to counter the Abolitionist movement.

White fear of rebellion

• The majority in Jamaica was non-white slaves (90% of population?)
• Whites needed to maintain a certain level of control
• Rebellion had happened in Haiti in the late 18th century
• Whites tried to limit communication between slaves; fearing that they would begin to plot rebellious acts

Medicine usually altruistic, however not when used only to improve economic gain in the
long run for plantation owners

Slavery important to US economy

• All slaves worth 40x the amount of the Federal Government’s budget

Caribbean slavery connected to US because transport of goods back to Britain

• Sugar sent up to US, made into a product (like rum), and then sent off to Britain on US ships

Medicine (Hospital) = Discipline

-Subtle way of disciplining slave

The hospital compares to a prison

-both disciplinary mechanisms

Slave traders promised prime and healthy slaves that were not contagious with Smallpox

• Similar to selling animals

Black bodies used for medical dissection (cadavers)

-White riots ensued after white bodies were stolen from their graves

History of cadavers (not covered in class):

Historically, human dissection was something that was avoided. The dissection of human
bodies was prohibited by the Council of Tours in 1163. Christians believed that mutilating
the body after death would prevent the soul from making it to heaven. It wasn’t until the
Protestant Reformation in the 16th century until London’s Royal College of Physicians
received legal authority to dissect cadavers. However, these bodies had to be from
criminals that had been hung because afterlife dissection was considered a punishment.
William Burke and William Hare were among the first grave robbers. Because of people
robbing graves, London passed the Warburton Anatomy Act of 1832; allowing anatomists
unlimited access to unclaimed bodies. In the United States, it wouldn’t be until 1789
until New York would pass legislation on cadavers because of riots. Doctors could then
receive bodies to dissect legally. By 1968, all 50 states adopted the
Uniform Anatomical Gift Act (donating your body).

Slaves were legally available to be dissected

-slaves were owned by the master and could be sold as dead bodies

Blacks given or denied health care based off of citizenship

-Medicaid

-Drug rehabilitation

Traces back to “we can’t trust the people and need to discipline them”

	Slaves	Plantation Owners
Pros of Healthcare for Slaves	Improved quality of life (The Act) Medical treatment for sudden accidents (machete)	Investment with a positive outcome (Capital Gain) "Increased productivity and moral of slave population" Self-Proclaimed Doctors (position of power) Slaves in hospital were in a controlled (locked), condensed area - therefore reducing the probability of a slave revolt
Cons of Healthcare for Slaves	Sent to the hospital (discipline, hospital seemed like a prison, if healthy enough: had to work at the hospital while there) Slaves would live longer lives Physical limits could be pushed further now that slaves could receive Healthcare	Requires investment

*There are many more factors that can be considered but here’s a few that I thought of. Of course, no matter how many reasons one finds, there will be the main trend that one group (plantation owners) has far more pros than the other, and the other group (slaves) has far more cons than the other group.

Works Cited:

“Chapter 1: Resurrectionists.” Final Exam: A Surgeon's Reflections on Mortality, by Pauline W. Chen, Vintage Books, 2008.