Slavery and Medicine: Enslavement and Medical Practices in Antebellum Louisiana

by Bankole,Katherine

• ISBN13: 9780815330592
• ISBN10: 0815330596
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-06-01
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This study re-evaluates the field known as Negro/Slave Medicine, which has traditionally focused on the efforts of slaveowners to provide medical care for their slaves, addressing the slaves' proactive management of medical care; brutality as a cause of the constant need for medical attention; and the health risks posed by arduous agricultural labor. This groundbreaking study offers insight into the health problems facing enslaved people, their attempts to deal with the causes and effects of illness and injury, and the slave owners' attitudes toward the medical treatment of slaves. The appendices present valuable data on the medical treatment of enslaved African Americans from the Touro Infirmary Archives that have never before been published. (Ph.D. dissertation, Temple University, 1996; revised with new preface)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	xiii
List of Tables	ix	(2)
Introduction	xi
Part One Overview of Enslavement and Medicine	3	(66)
Chapter 1 The History and Scholarship of Enslavement and Medicine	5	(22)
Chapter 2 "Slave Medicine": The Extent of Medical Care of Enslaved Africans	27	(6)
Chapter 3 Brutality/Punishment and the Issue of Medical Health Care	33	(12)
Chapter 4 Protection of Property and Legislation	45	(6)
Chapter 5 Labor and Medical Health Care	51	(18)
Part Two Africans, Medical Theories and Practices	69	(50)
Chapter 6 Human/Subhuman Issue: Physiological and Pseudo-Scientific Theories	71	(6)
Chapter 7 Medical Management, Practices and the Hospital Experience	77	(22)
Chapter 8 Medical Experiments, Treatments, Surgical Procedures and Post-Mortem Examinations	99	(10)
Chapter 9 "Negro/Slave Diseases" and other Illness Attributed to or Affecting Enslaved Africans	109	(10)
Part Three African Materia Medica and Enslavement	119	(36)
Chapter 10 Characterizations of African Medicine	123	(4)
Chapter 11 African Perceptions of Slaveocracy Medicine	127	(4)
Chapter 12 The Traditional African Worldview and Medicine	131	(10)
Chapter 13 African Agency in the Care and Treatment of Illness/Disease	141	(14)
Summary and Conclusion	155	(6)
Bibliographic Essay	161	(18)
Appendices A-D	179	(56)
Bibliography	235	(26)
Index	261