Dysaesthesia aethiopica
In
History
Applied exclusively to
Cartwright felt that dysaesthesia aethiopica was "easily curable, if treated on sound physiological principles."[6] Insensitivity of the skin was one symptom of the disease, so the skin should be stimulated:
The best means to stimulate the skin is, first, to have the patient well washed with warm water and soap; then, to anoint it all over in oil, and to slap the oil in with a broad leather strap; then to put the patient to some hard kind of work in the sunshine.[6]
Author Vanessa Jackson has noted that lesions were a symptom of dysaesthesia aethiopica and "the ever-resourceful Dr. Cartwright determined that whipping could ... cure this disorder. Of course, one wonders if the whipping were not the cause of the 'lesions' that confirmed the diagnosis."[7]
According to Cartwright, after the prescribed "course of treatment" the slave will "look grateful and thankful to the white man whose compulsory power ... has restored his sensation and dispelled the mist that clouded his intellect."[6]
According to Cartwright, dysaesthesia aethiopica was "much more prevalent among free negroes living in clusters by themselves, than among slaves on our plantations, and attacks only such slaves as live like free negroes in regard to diet, drinks, exercise, etc." – indeed, according to Cartwright, "nearly all [free negroes] are more or less afflicted with it, that have not got some white person to direct and to take care of them."[8] He explicitly dismissed the opinion which assigned the causes of the "problematic" behaviour to the social situation of the slaves without further justifications: "[The northern physicians] ignorantly attribute the symptoms to the debasing influence of slavery on the mind."
See also
- Drapetomania, the name given to what was seen at one point in time to be a mental illness that caused black slaves to flee captivity.
- Scientific racism
- Minority stress
References
- ISBN 0-8078-4693-7. Retrieved 2007-10-07.
- ^ Pilgrim, David (November 2005). "Question of the Month: Drapetomania". Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia. Archived from the original on 2011-06-14. Retrieved 2007-10-04.
- ^ DeBow's Review. XI. Retrieved 2007-10-04.
- ISBN 0-7425-2119-2.
- ISBN 0-631-21735-5.
- ^ a b c Caplan et al., p. 37.
- ^ Vanessa Jackson (2002). "In Our Own Voice: African-American Stories of Oppression, Survival and Recovery in the Mental Health Systems". MindFreedom International. p. 5. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-10-29. Retrieved 2007-10-07.
- ISBN 1-58901-014-0.
Sources
- Samuel A. Cartwright, "Report on the Diseases and Physical Peculiarities of the Negro Race", The New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal 1851:691-715 (May).
- Reprinted in DeBow's Review XI (1851). Available at Google Books and excerpted at PBS.org.
- Reprinted in Arthur Caplan, H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., and James McCartney, eds, Concepts of Health and Disease in Medicine: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Boston: Addison-Wesley, 1980).
- Reprinted in Arthur L. Caplan, James J. McCartney, Dominic A. Sisti, eds, Health, Disease, and Illness: Concepts in Medicine (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2004) ISBN 1-58901-014-0.
- Reprinted in
External links
- An Early History - African American Mental Health Archived 2011-07-09 at the Wayback Machine