"Slavery as It Is:" Medicine and Slaves of the Plantation South

Author(s): David McBride

Source: OAH Magazine of History, Vol. 19, No. 5, Medicine and History (Sep., 2005), pp. 36-
39
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of Organization of American Historians
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 Teaching Strategy David McBride
"Slavery As It Is:"
Medicine and Slaves of the
Plantation South
Today's students usually take for granted that medicine con
sists of clinical treatment in high tech hospital settings as re
flected in television shows such as ER. However, disease and
the struggle against it are as old as humankind. Throughout the era of
slavery, medicine transformed slowly into a social institution, but only
as a competitor with traditional health practices. In the early colonies
of North America almost any person could declare himself a doctor.
By the mid-nineteenth century doctors had at least put professional
medicine on track to distinguish it, in later decades, from quackery and
cults. Lay folk healers, though, were pivotal to the slave population's
struggle for health during slavery (i). This pluralism in the struggle for
health and medical cures inside the oppressive landscape of slavery can
be an overarching boundary for course work on the history of medicine
during slavery.
Instructors seeking to introduce the subject of medicine and health
in the slave South can plan lessons focused on numerous historio
graphical themes or issues. Alongside assigned readings from the large
body of scholarship on the demographic, economic, and nutritional as
pects of slave health, teachers should devise lessons that utilize docu
ments on the social nature and community dimension of slave health
care (2). They can be incorporated into courses on pre-Civil War social
history, African American history, U. S. southern history, and the his
tory of American slavery.
Themes to consider for a course component on slavery and medi
cine might include: the ways that plantation owners and doctors bal
anced the plantation system's need to coerce as much labor as possible
from a slave without causing his or her death or infertility; the effort by
planters and doctors to provide sufficient living resources that enabled
their slaves to remain productive and bear many children; the impact
of diseases and injury on the social stability of slave communities; the
extent to which illness and mortality of sub-populations in slave society
reflected their different environmental exposures and living circum
stances rather than their alleged racial characteristics; how slaves man
aged to maintain healthy and stable families in their own communities
despite the hardships of enslavement; and finally, legacies from "slave
36 OAH Magazine of History September 2005
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medicine" that may have been carried forward into public health and
black social conditions in the Jim Crow era.
The lesson themes below utilize these concepts and questions.
Each theme is approached with two types of required readings: (i)
scholarly articles from specialized journals; and (2) primary sources
or documents such as ex-slave narratives, as well as antebellum au
tobiographies, newspapers, and pamphlets. Combined, such reading
materials should stimulate individual thinking, class discussions, and
potential issues for student research papers. The text materials pro
vide scholarly coverage of the emerging medical profession; disease
and health of slave populations as biological phenomena; and tradi
tional health care in slave societies. By contrast, the sample primary
sources encourage students to put themselves in the place of people in
slave communities confronted with the health risks and hardships of
enslavement. By combining these two types of materials, students also
can gain exposure to the wide variety of methodologies employed by
medical and social historians.
National Standards
These activities will fulfill the following standard in The National
Standards for U.S. History:
Era 4: Expansion and Reform (1801-1861)
Standard 2C: Demonstrate understanding of the rapid growth of slavery
after 1800 and how African Americans coped with the "peculiar institution."
Time
The ideas discussed below are designed to be flexible so that in
structors can adjust the activities to suit the time allotted.
Procedure
Lesson Theme I: Slavery and the Erosion of Health
This unit will introduce scholarship about the nature of slave health and
disease. At the same time it will enable students to learn from first-hand ac
counts about the erosive health conditions and dangers slaves faced daily.
The destructive effects of slave life on slaves have been well re
searched. The endnotes cited by Todd Savitt in his article "Black
Health on the Plantation" in this is
sue of the OAH Magazine of History
(pages 14-16) provide references to
major scholarly writings about the
health of slaves. Instructors will
find a convenient collection of es
says in the volumes Medicine, Nutri
tion, Demography, and Slavery (1989)
P^yv* ?0 -*-<*'- m^'""\ ?sJ*N^p|^ even greater loss" (8). Some schol
arly readings contend that various
iSRiesAir planters used doctors regularly to
oversee the health of their slaves in
#,
times of accidents, severe illness,
or childbirth. Other planters, wish
ing to save money, relied on their
own self-taught skills and the help

AS 117
and Women and the Family in a Slave of their wives to address the health
Society (1989), both edited by Paul care needs of slaves. Large planta
Finkelman. Fertility and child health tions or industrial sites sometimes
issues are covered by articles in the established hospitals or infirmaries
collection More Than Chattel: Black for the care of their slaves.
Women and Slavery in the Americas On the other hand, documentary
(1996), edited by David Gaspar and materials involving the social lives
Darlene Clark Hine (3). The articles
in these works cover different aspects
TES of planters and slaves also reveal
to students the more nuanced rela
of the slave's physical health?from tionships that doctors established
demographic and nutritional studies in slave households and communi
to considerations of southern physi ties. Some doctors were benevolent
cians and specific diseases of slaves. professionals toward slave patients,
To complement these articles, in ? THOUSAND ISTITNESSES. while others were merciless slave
structors should assign historical docu holders. Here is a former slave on
ments depicting the physical effects of a Mississippi plantation describing
plantation conditions on slaves as de his respect for the local doctor:
scribed by witnesses and the narratives De slaves was well-treated
of slaves themselves. One excellent when de got sick. My marster
example is Theodore Dwight Weld's had a standirf doctor what he
American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a paid by de year. Dey was a hor
Thousand Witnesses (1839) (4). Weld was spital building near de quarters
a prominent abolitionist who, along ar? a good old granny woman
with his wife Angelina and sister-in to nuss de sick. Dey was five or
law Sarah Grimk?, scoured thousands
RBW TOftKi * six beds in a room. One room
of copies of southern newspapers for was for de mens ar? one for de
factual articles, narratives, and testimo wimmins. Us doctor was name
nies involving the treatment of slaves. Richardson, ar? he tended us
To prevent readers from dismissing his long after de War. He sho' was
survey as an inaccurate tirade, Weld Wl: a genf men ar? a powerful good
organized a committee of prominent doctor (9).
abolitionists to verify the materials he Theodore Dwight Weld's 1839 collection of testimonies about the cruel By contrast, few students who read
used. The result was American Slavery treatment of slaves, American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Wit the classic autobiography of Harriet
As It Is, which rapidly sold in the thou nesses, sold 100,000 copies in its first year.
Jacobs (pseudonym Linda Brent),
sands (5). Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.
The booklet documented the Written by Herself (1861), will forget
harsh treatment of slaves with entries on overwork, brandings, shoot her owner, the dishonorable Dr. Flint. Other narratives detail wanton
ings, "floggings," and "wanton cruelties." Instructors may ask students brutality. In a WPA interview, former slave Tom Hawkins recounted:
to closely examine a particular scholarly essay and explore the impli "When Dr. Cannon found out dat his carriage driver had larned to read
cations of these harsh realities. Given the growing availability of nar and write whilst he was takirf de doctor's chillun to and f'om school,
ratives of both slaves and ex-slaves, teachers may assign students an he had dat. . .[man's] thumbs cut off, and put another boy to doiri de
exercise that requires them to peruse these materials for more facts drivin' in his place" (10). By contrast, in 1855 the Louisiana supreme
about the health problems of slaves (6). court tried a case involving an overseer's gross cruelty and killing of
Lesson Theme II: Doctors and Lay Healers a slave. The physician who did the postmortem examination testified
This theme examines the roles of and relationship between pro that the overseer utterly disregarded the slave's health and had caused
fessional or so-called regular doctors with diverse links to slaves and the death (11).
plantation households. It also covers lay practitioners in the slave com Frequently the doctor was only one member of a number of health care
munities, especially midwives and nurses. takers in a particular plantation setting. For example, among the WPA in
Scholarship on slave medicine emphasizes that the professional terviews of ex-slaves is George White's memories of his master, a physician,
doctor's central role was to assist planters in "slave management" (7). and White's father. "My daddy was owned by Dr. Dick White of Charlotte
As an early study of slavery in Alabama asserted, the slave owner's County [Virginia]. He [was] a good master" because he fed White's family
vigilance about his slaves' health was driven by "prudence and human amply. George White stated further that his father was "a kinda doctor too
ity." A slave who became ill "meant loss of working time; death, an like his master." He described how Dr. White once had a patient who he

OAH Magazine of History September 2005 37

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could not cure, but George White's father did because "papa knowed all the
roots" (12). In other words, he practiced a kind of herbal medicine.
For the slaves, "real" health care more often than not was a result of
folk healers, grandmother midwives, lay nurses, social networks such as
churches, and, for pregnant slaves, female networks. Furthermore, slave
holders and their families sometimes used these healers as well (13). For
documentary readings, excerpts from classic books by E. Franklin Frazier
and Frederick Douglass illustrate this point. In his The Negro Family in
the United States (1939), Frazier emphasized the importance of the "en
ergy, courage, and devotion" of the grandmother to slave families. "During
slavery the Negro grandmother occupied in many instances an important
place in the plantation economy and was highly esteemed by both the
slaves and the masters," he wrote. As further evidence, Frazier presented
Frederick Douglass's remembrance of his grandmother that appeared in
the hitter's Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1882): "[S]he was a good
nurse [and] was held in high esteem, far higher than was the lot of most
colored persons in the region" (14).
Grandmothers passed on their practical health skills to others
throughout the slave community. Former slave Patsy Moses remem
bered her "conjure doctor, old Dr. Jones." He would "walk 'bout in
de black coat like a preacher, and wear sideburns, and use roots and
sich for he medicine. He larnt 'bout dem in the piney woods from
he old granny" (15). Perhaps most important of the lay care workers
were midwives and nurses. Susie King, as well as Harriet Tubman
and Sojourner Truth, served as nurses in the Civil War. The many
published interviews of ex-slaves and slave autobiographies contain
innumerable references to midwifery and nursing (16). Instructors
can incorporate these materials as documentary readings.
Conclusion
Gaining exposure to the overlapping social worlds of physicians and
slaves can yield exciting insights for students of history. The fledgling
medical profession was as integral to the slave society of the Old South as
were the lay slave healers. Blending the more specialized scholarship of
medical historians with primary sources of social and oral historians will
yield insights into how these two social groups?doctors and slaves?at
tempted to thrive in the antebellum South. Slaves struggled for their
lives while slaveholders struggled unsuccessfully to harness professional
medicine in the service of racial slavery?a medicine that was slowly but
inevitably becoming more scientific and humanitarian even if the insti
tution of slavery was not. ?
End notes
i. Herbert M. Mor?is, The History of the Negro in Mediane, 2nd. ed. (New York:
Publishers Co./Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, 1968);
Debra Anne Susie, In the Way of Our Grandmothers: A Cultural View of Twentieth
Century Midwifery in Florida (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988);
Gertrude Jacinta Fraser, African American Midwifery in the South: Dialogues of
Birth, Race and Memory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998);
Marie Jenkins Schwartz, Born in Bondage: Growing Up Enslaved in the Antebellum
South (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000); Deborah G. White,
Ar'n't I a Woman: Female Slaves in the Plantation South, rev. ed. (New York: W.W.
Norton, 1999). Folk healers had numerous popular names such as grannies (for
elderly midwives), herb doctors and doctoresses, and root doctors.
2. On the growth of historiography on the social and cultural aspects of
American medical history, see Judith W. Leavitt, "Medicine in Context: A
Review Essay of the History of Medicine," American Historical Review 95
(December 1990): 1471-84.
3. Paul Finkelman, ed., Mediane, Nutrition, Demography, and Slavery (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1989); Finkelman, ed., Women and the Family in a Slave
Society (New York: Garland Publishing, 1989); David Barry Gaspar and
Darlene Clark Hine, eds., More Than Chattel: Black Women and Slavery in the
Americas (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1996). Recent important
38 O AH Magazine of History September 2005
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articles include Christian Warren, "Northern Chills, Southern Fevers: Race
Specific Mortality in American Cities, 1730-1900," Journal of Southern History
63 (February 1997): 23-56, and Jeffrey R. Young, "Ideology and Death on a
Savannah Plantation, 1833-1867: Paternalism Amidst 'a Good Supply of
Disease and Pairi," Journal of Southern History 59 (November 1993): 673-706.
4. Theodore Dwight Weld, American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of A Thousand
Witnesses, reprint with new preface by William Loren Katz (New York: Arno
Press, 1969,1839).
5. Robert William Fogel, Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of
American Slavery (New York: Norton, 1989), 119-21, 265, 269, 271, 277-79.
6. Another collection of interviews with former slaves that provides firsthand
accounts of the health life of slaves is James Mellon, ed., Bullwhip Days: The
Slaves Remember, An Oral History (New York: Avon, 1990). A chronological
list of slave narratives and autobiographical narratives is presented in
Charles T. Davis and Henry L. Gates Jr., eds., The Slave's Narrative, reprint
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990,1985), 319-30.
7. See, for example, several articles in Finkelman, ed., Medicine, Nutrition,
Demography, and Slavery; and also, Young, "Ideology and Death on a
Savannah Plantation."
8. James B. Sellers, Slavery in Alabama, 2nd ed. (University University of
Alabama Press, 1964), 109.
9. Isaac Stier interview, Bullwhip Days, ed. by Mellon, 174.
10. Hazel V. Carby, "'Hear My Voice, Ye Careless Daughters': Narratives of Slave
and Free Women before Emancipation," in William L. Andrews, ed., African
American Autobiography: A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice Hall, 1993), 59-76. Tom Hawkins quote in Bullwhip Days, ed. by
Mellon, 198.
11. Judith K. Sch?fer, "'Details are of a Most Revolting Character': Cruelty to
Slaves as Seen in Appeals to the Supreme Court of Louisiana," Chicago-Kent
Law Review 68 (1993): 1302-03. Thanks to the research of legal historians
such as Finkelman, Sch?fer, and their colleagues in this special issue of
the Chicago-Kent Law Review on the Symposium on the Law of Slavery,
instructors can track down documents from such legal proceedings for use
as documentary readings. See also, Tessa M. Gorman, "Back on the Chain
Gang: Why the Eighth Amendment and the History of Slavery Proscribe
the Resurgence of Chain Gangs," California Law Revew 85 (March 1997):
441-78.
12. George White interview, in Weevils in the Wheat: Interviews with Virginia Ex
Slaves, Charles L. Perdue Jr., Thomas E. Barden, and Robert K. Philips, eds.
(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1976), 310.
13. See the works cited in note 1 above. Also see, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Within
the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 169-72.
14. E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro Family in the United States (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1939), 146; quote from Douglass, ibid., 147.
15. Patsy Moses interview in Bullwhip Days, ed. by Mellon, p. 97. Moses was careful to
emphasize that "Dr. Jones" was not a "voodoo doctor" who simply cast spells. He
used specific roots to treat symptoms of diseases like smallpox and mumps.
16. On the nursing of King, Tubman, and Truth, and the larger issues of
nursing in African American history, see Evelyn L. Barbee, "Racism in U.
S. Nursing," Medical Anthropology Quarterly y (December 1993): 346-62. For
artistic images that can be examined in class involving Harriet Tubman's
nurse activities, see Patricia Hills, "Jacob Lawrence as Pictorial Griot: The
'Harriet Tubman' Series," American Art 7 (Winter 1993): 40-59.
David McBride, Ph. D., is professor of African-American Studies and His
tory, and faculty associate at the Center for Health Care and Policy Research
at Pennsylvania State University. He has written extensively on modern U. S.
and African American medical and health history. Among his books are: From
TB to AIDS: Epidemics among Urban Blacks Since 1900 (Albany: SUNY
Press, 1991), and Missions for Science: U. S. Technology and Medicine in
America's African World (New Brunswick, N. f.: Rutgers University Press,
2002).
 Teachers
Mrs. Mildred Graves (b. 1837)
1608 North Ave., Richmond, Va.
Interview: Faith Morris
Date of Interview: April 23, 1937
Source: Va. State Library

I was born in Hanover County, Virginia about a hundred years

ago. My owner was name Tinsley.
The Tinsley's were good to me. Cose at times things was purty
bad, but on a whole dey was decent people.
What kind of work I did? Most everything chile. I cooked, den I
was house maid, an' I raised I don' know how many chillun. You know
in dem days dey didn' have many doctors. Well I was always good when
it come to de sick, so dat was mostly my job. I was also what you
call a midwife too. Whenever any o' de white fols xroun' Hanover was
goin' to have babies dey always got word to Mr. Tinsley dat dey want
to hire me fer dat time. Sho he let me go?twas money fer him, you
know. He would give me only a few cents, but dat was kinda good o'
him to do dat. Plenty niggers was hired out an' didn't get nothin'.
Sometimes I had three an' four sick at de same time. Marser use to
tell me I was a valuable slave. Dey use to come fer me both day an'
night?you know it's a funny thing how babies has a way of comin'
heah when it's dark.
One night Mrs. Leake sent fer me. 'Twas 'roun' twelve o'clock
an' ev'ybody was sleep when her husban' Judge Leake, come all out
o' breaf a-askin' fer me. He said to Mr. Tinsley dat his wife was
mighty sick an' dey was 'fraid she was goin' to die an' please let
me come to see her. I went an' when I got dare she had two doctors
f'om Richmond, ut dey won't doin' nothin' fer her. Something was
very wrong wid Mrs. Leake dey say, an' dey want to call another doc
tor-min' you, dere was two dere already. I toi' dem I could bring her
'roun', but dey laugh at me an' say, "Get back darkie, we mean busi
ness an' don' won't any witch doctors or hoodoo stuff." Mrs. Leake
heard dem an' she said 'tween pains she want me; so dey said if you
want her fer your doctor we would go. I stayed an' wuked f'om 'bout
one o'clock to eight o'clock. I tell you dat was de toughes' case I
ever had. I did ev'ything I knowed an' sometimes I didn' know how I
done it, but anyway a son was born dat mornin' an' dat boy lived.
He didn' weigh five pounds I know, but I fix him up. Mrs. Leake got
well too. Even de doctors dat had call me bad names said many praise
fer me. De baby was named Andrew an' he was my chile. After he got
older he use to steal over Mr. Tinsley's to see me. He would bring me
things?eats, money, candy, an' purty earrings. One I wore in my ear
'till de Yankees come an' stole 'em. He use to teach me to write my
name an' I learn lots' o' things f'om dat boy. He toi' me his father
tried to buy me, but Mr. Tinsley wouldn' sell me. Den he went to war
an' dat blessed chile was kilt; I knowed he died fight in' .
Bout de war? Dat was some time! I don' know so much. I wuked all Thanks to the generous support of the
de time. I know dat one day I was in de field wukin', de Yankees sol
diers was marchin', bout six o' 'em stopped an' took a razor blade Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History,
and cut off my hair. I had long black hair dat hung way down my back.
I kicked an' fit as much as I could, but I couldn' stop 'em. the Organization of American Historians
Another time I was goin' to see bout one o' my chillun, white
chillun, an' de Yankees stop me, an' took off my gold earrings dat is offering travel fellowships for precoi
my chile Andrew had give me. I felt worse over dis den I did over legiate history teachers to attend the 2006
losin' my hair. 'Cose dey use to bother other colored folks too. You
see, one reason dey got me so much was dat I was livin' on de road OAH Annual Meeting, April 19-22,2006,
dat led f'om Washington to Richmond.
One time, it was a Sunday afternoon an' five o' us colored girls in Washington, D.C. The annual meeting
was walkin' out, some Yankees stopped us an' took razors an' cut us
on our arms, legs, an' on our backs. Dis was new to us cause Mr. affords a unique opportunity for teachers
Tinsley didn' ever beat or hurt us. Mr. Tinsley tried to fin' out
who did it but he couldn'. He was real mad at 'em an' he say if he to enhance their professional development
could fin' 'em he would shoot 'em. My han's an' arms hurt so bad, but by attending sessions specifically geared
I had to fix mine up some so I could help the others dat didn' know
what to do or have anybody to do it fer 'em. to classroom teaching, as well as scholarly
All durin' de war I stayed wid Mr. Tinsley. After de war when I
was set free I come to Richmond to wuk. I wuked fer lots o' people. research and public history. Fellowships are
Den I met Willie Graves an' I married him. He was f'om Washington,
D.C. for travel-related expenses, and teachers
I have nine chillun an' my husban' died when de younges' was a
baby, two years ole. who have not yet attended an OAH annual
After he died I had to get out an' wuk agin. Dis time I had to
cook, wash, an' iron, ckean an' nurse de sick. I have attend many meeting will be given preference.
births in Richmond an' many o' de important people o' de city are
"my babies." In dem days in Richmond when doctors was few I wuked
wid a lot o' 'em. I also use to shroud de dead.
information and application will be available late
fall at <http://www.oah.org/meetings/2006/>.
Excerpt from a 1930s WPA interview with Mrs. Mildred Graves, a midwife in Hancock
County, Virginia. (Weevils in the Wheat: Interviews with Virginia Ex-Slaves, Charles L.
ORGANIZATION OF AMERICAN HISTORIANS
Perdue Jr., Thomas E. Barden, and Robert K. Philips, eds. [Charlottesville: University
Press of Virginia, 1976], 120-21.)

O AH Magazine of History September 2005 39

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