Type of Document Master's Thesis Author Mitchell, Sarah URN etd-65172149731401 Title Bodies of Knowledge: The Influence of Slaves on the Antebellum Medical Community Degree Master of Arts Department History Advisory Committee
Advisor Name Title Kathleen W. Jones Committee Chair Beverly Bunch-Lyons none Crandall Shifflett none Keywords
- none
Date of Defense 1997-05-02 Availability unrestricted Abstract The influence of slaves on the south is well
documented in areas such as agriculture, music,
diet, religion and language. This thesis extends the
list to include medicine. It also suggests that the
importance of cultural transfer to America from
places other than Europe has been overlooked in
the history of medicine. The medical influence of
slaves took the form of botanical remedies, many of
them with an African origin, and were disseminated
through the treatments of slave healers. Slave
medical knowledge offered a viable alternative for
whites to both nineteenth-century "heroic" practices
and to alternative methods, such as homeopathy
and Thomsonianism. In addition, the slave's body
itself was a vehicle of medical influence. Informed
by nineteenth-century beliefs about the differences
between whites and blacks, antebellum physicians
performed experiments upon slave bodies that they
could not and did not perform on whites'. Transfer
of slave medical knowledge was facilitated by
personal contact between individuals, by the
publicity surrounding slaves who were set free for
revealing cures, through the services of slave
healers, through newspapers and medical journals in
which whites wrote of slave treatments and
acknowledged the source of the information, and
through word of mouth. This study uses the theme
of ambivalence to reconcile the conflicting attitudes
of southern physicians and slaveowners towards
slave medical knowledge.
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