Response #2 Asylum and Acquisition

The white anxieties that formed in Jamaica because of the large slave population wildly outnumbering the slaveholders, the believed moral obligation that God had entrusted slaveholders to take care of slaves, and the want to maintain the hierarchical civic order influenced the beginning and functioning of slave hospitals. These hospitals were built like prisons with bars on the windows, chains and shackles for the patients, and tedious work to still make a profit from the slaves’ labor. By building these hospitals and legislating the New Act of Assembly, slaveholders attempted to quiet abolitionists’ criticisms about the treatment of slaves and undercut claims of their cruelties. Workhouses were established to correct behavior of slaves, and after revolts began like Tacky’s Revolt, planters’ anxieties grew and their want to police black people’s movements increased. The slaveholders in Jamaica shared these anxieties with other planters in the British colonies and in the United States.

In the South of the United States, private slave hospitals were created by physicians to make a profit from planters who were worried about losing their slaves. Slaves were seen as a commodity and an expense that needed to be maintained. They were not seen as people but as an investment in strengthening the success of the business. Having the ability to control the health of their slaves, planters used healthcare as a check on slaves’ behavior. This “specialized” segregated care exposed slaves to dangerous procedures, and later after the establishment of medical schools in South Carolina and other parts of the South, slaves’ bodies were used to teach medical students. Dead bodies of both enslaved black people and free black people were either bought or dug up to be dissected and used as a teaching instrument in anatomy. Medical professors, along with any other person in power, had no respect for slaves and their families.