An American Health Dilemma: A Medical History of African Americans and the Problem of Race: Beginnings to 1900

by Byrd,W. Michael

• ISBN13: 9780415924498
• ISBN10: 0415924499
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-08-21
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

At times mirroring and at times shockingly disparate to the rise of traditional White American medicine, the history of African American health care is a story of traditional healers; root doctors; granny midwives; underappreciated and overworked African American physicians; scrupulous and unscrupulous White doctors and scientists; governmental support and neglect; epidemics; and poverty. Virtually every part of this story revolves around race. More than 50 years after the publication ofAn American Dilemma,Gunnar Myrdal's 1944 classic about race relations in the USA,An American Health Dilemmapresents a comprehensive and groundbreaking history and social analysis of race, race relations and the African American medical and public health experience. Beginning with the origins of Western medicine and science in Egypt, Greece and Rome the authors explore the relationship between race, medicine, and health care from the precursors of American science and medicine through the days of the slavetrade with the harrowing Middle Passage and equally deadly Breaking-In period through the Civil War and the gains of Reconstruction and the reversals caused by Jim Crow laws. It offers an extensive examination of the history of intellectual and scientific racism that evolved to give sanction to the mistreatment, medical abuse, and neglect of African Americans and other non-White people. Also included are biographical portraits of Black medical pioneers like James McCune Smith, the first African American to earn a degree from a European university, and anecdotal vignettes,like the tragic story of "the Hottentot Venus", which illustrate larger themes. An AmericanHealth Dilemmapromises to become an irreplaceable and essential look at African American and medical history and will provide an invaluable baseline for future exploration of race and racism in the American health system.

Table of Contents

List of Figures and Tables	xi
Foreword	xv
Acknowledgments	xix
Preface	xxiii
Introduction	1	(1)
On the Origins of a Race- and Class-Based System	1	(7)
Goals and Objectives	8	(4)
Methodology	12	(2)
Background for Reassessing Race, Class, and Health Care in the United States	14	(11)
PART I The Background	25	(160)
Race, Biology, and Health Care in the United States: Reassessing a Relationship	27	(124)
On Race: Examining an Enigma	34	(11)
The Evolution of a Racially Unequal Health System	43	(2)
Race Explored: A Life Sciences/Health Care Perspective	45	(7)
Race: An Intellectual History	52	(10)
Race: A History of Science Perspective	62	(51)
Race, Medicine, and Science: Ancient Relationships	65	(9)
Race, Medicine, and Science: The Middle Ages	74	(8)
Race, Medicine, and Science during the Renaissance and Reformation	82	(11)
Race, Medicine, and Science in the Age of Reason and Enlightenment	93	(5)
Nineteenth-Century Race, Science, and Medicine	98	(10)
The Social Sciences and Twentieth-Century Race, Science, and Medicine	108	(5)
Race, Class, Ethnic Politics, and Health Care	113	(31)
Evaluative Benchmarks of Black Progress	126	(18)
Strategies to Overcome a Dream Deferred: Race, Justice, and Equity in Health Care As We Enter the Twenty-first Century	144	(7)
Race, Medicine, and Society: From Prehistoric to English Colonial Times	151	(34)
Ancient Western Medicine and Health Care: Race and Class Considerations in Predecessor Health Systems	152	(6)
Ancient Greece: Establishing Western Science and Hierarchies	158	(5)
Roman Medicine: Legions, Slaves, and Public Health	163	(5)
The Middle Ages	168	(5)
The Arabic Legacy of Race and Slavery	173	(3)
The Scientific and Medical Renaissance: Inauspicious Racial and Medical-Social Roots	176	(3)
Black Health before and during the Slave Trade: Beginnings of a Health Deficit Legacy	179	(6)
PART II Race, Medicine, and Health in the North American Colonies and the Early U.S. Republic	185	(66)
Black Health in the North American English Colonies, 1619-1730	187	(18)
A Background with Iberian Roots	187	(2)
The North American English Colonies	189	(5)
Black Slave Health: Effects of the Diaspora	194	(4)
Origin of a Race- and Class-Based Health System	198	(3)
An Embryonic Healing Profession	201	(1)
A Black Healing Tradition	202	(3)
Black Health in the Republican Era, 1731-1812	205	(46)
Seeds of a Multitiered, Unequal Health System	209	(3)
Race, Medicine, and Health Care: Reassessing the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries	212	(9)
The ``Hottentot Venus'' and Nineteenth-Century Racial Science	218	(3)
A ``Slave Health Deficit'' Institutionalized: 1731-1812	221	(10)
An Emerging Dual Health System in Black and White	231	(4)
Race Medicine: Real or Imagined Differences?	235	(5)
The Black Medical Profession: 1731-1812	240	(3)
The White Medical Profession, 1731-1812	243	(8)
PART III Race, Medicine, and Health in the United States from 1812 to 1900	251	(164)
Black Health and the Jacksonian and Antebellum Periods, 1812-1861	253	(69)
Growth, Change, and Manifest Destiny	253	(8)
Beginnings of a Health System: Black Subjugation, Dependency, and Separate Development	261	(18)
A Unique Health System Culture's Modus Operandi: Sensationalism, Pragmatism, and Race and Class Exploitation for Scientific Advance	270	(2)
A New Perspective on a Medical Icon	272	(7)
Entrenchment of a Black Health Deficit	279	(10)
Stewardship Denied: White Medicine in Jacksonian and Antebellum America	289	(13)
The Health Professions' Color and Gender Lines	302	(20)
A Slave Hospital on a ``Good'' Plantation	317	(5)
The Civil War, Reconstruction, Post-Reconstruction, and Black Health, 1861-1900	322	(93)
Black Health 1861-1900: A Roller-Coaster Ride to Nowhere	328	(29)
The Civil War and Black Health	332	(15)
Black Health and the Reconstruction Era	347	(4)
Black Health in the Gilded Age	351	(4)
Black Health Enters the Progressive Era	355	(2)
Health System Heal Thyself	357	(18)
The White Medical Profession Comes of Age	375	(9)
The Black Medical Profession: Practicing behind the ``Veil''	384	(23)
Health Policy Born of Pragmatism	387	(20)
A Mixed Legacy	407	(8)
Conclusion: Laying the Foundations of a Dual and Unequal Health System	415	(2)
Notes	417	(98)
Select Bibliography	515	(30)
A Note on Sources	545	(6)
Index	551