5/10/21

Today I did some general research on medical inequalities in colonial times. It really made me realize how interconnected health care can be with all aspects of human life. In a way, you can understand US history, and the attitudes of people throughout history, through the lens of health care.

From the beginning when slaves were forced into America, there was an obsession with black body. Medical research and scientific theories on interpretation of “racial” traits, were created to further racial stereotypes and descrimination. These stereotypes ranged from “proof” of black inferiority to sexualization of black people. In 1838, American scientist Samuel George Morton published Crania Americana- a book demonstrating how human skull measurements indicated a hierarchy of racial types. At the time, his research was a forerunner of phrenology (character and intelligence by interpreting the shape of the skull). He derived that Caucasian’s have the largest skulls and therefore the largest brains and black people have the smallest. Obsession of black body was not only in terms of work and superiority, but it was also tied to sexual attractiveness and reproductive ability. There was a heavy focus on genitalia to further stereotypes that enslaved people were sexually aggressive. Harriet A. Washington, in her book Medical Apartheid explains these theories. She writes, “But white ascribed black women’s sexual availability not to their powerlessness but to a key tenet of scientific racism: Blacks were unable to control their powerful sexual drives, which were frequently compared to those of rutting animals. This lack of control made black men dangerous and made black women sexually aggressive Jezebels who habitually enticed white men into inappropriate sexual relations,” (p45).

In colonial times, health care of enslaved people was not so much about their wellbeing, but about commercial calculation. Physically straining work and bad living conditions led to health conditions that were oftentimes brushed away as enslaved people “pretending to be sick”. There was a myth that black people did not feel pain to the same degree as white settlers. It was common for doctors to buy slaves to conduct experiments too painful or risky to perform on white people. Next, I will research some narratives and examples of experiments that happened in colonial times.