Drapetomania was a supposed

mental illness A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness or psychiatric disorder, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. Such features may be persistent, relapsing and remitti ...

that, in 1851, American physician

Samuel A. Cartwright Samuel Adolphus Cartwright (November 3, 1793 – May 2, 1863) was an American physician who practiced in Mississippi and Louisiana in the antebellum United States. Cartwright is best known as the inventor of the 'mental illness' of drapetomania ...

hypothesized as the cause of

enslaved Africans The Atlantic slave trade, transatlantic slave trade, or Euro-American slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly to the Americas. The slave trade regularly used the triangular trade route and i ...

fleeing captivity. This hypothesis centered around the belief that slavery was such an improvement upon the lives of slaves that only those suffering from some form of mental illness would wish to escape. Cartwright specifically cited the tendency of slaves to flee the plantations that held them. Since slaves happy with their condition would not want to leave, he inferred that such people had to be sick, impervious to the natural order of things. He published an article about black slaves' illnesses and idiosyncrasies in a widely circulated Southern journal. Contemporarily reprinted in the South, Cartwright's article was widely mocked and satirized in the northern United States. The concept has since been debunked as

pseudoscience Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or falsifiability, unfa ...

and shown to be part of the edifice of

scientific racism Scientific racism, sometimes termed biological racism, is the pseudoscience, pseudoscientific belief that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racism (racial discrimination), racial inferiority, or racial superiority.. "Few tragedies ...

. The term derives from the

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

δραπέτης (''drapetēs'', "a runaway

lave ''Lave'' was an ironclad floating battery of the French Navy during the 19th century. She was part of the of floating batteries. In the 1850s, the British and French navies deployed iron-armoured floating batteries as a supplement to the wooden ...

) and μανία (''mania'', "madness, frenzy"). As late as 1914, the third edition of

Thomas Lathrop Stedman Thomas Lathrop Stedman, M.D. (1853-1938) was an early American medical doctor and editor of the Medical Record starting in 1890. Biography He was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on October 11, 1853. He received bachelor's and master's degrees from Trini ...

's ''Practical Medical Dictionary'' included an entry for ''drapetomania'', defined as " Vagabondage,

dromomania Dromomania was a historical psychiatric diagnosis whose primary symptom was uncontrollable urge to walk or wander. Dromomania has also been referred to as travelling fugue. Non-clinically, the term has come to be used to describe a desire for frequ ...

; an uncontrollable or insane impulsion to wander."

Description

Cartwright described the disorder – which, he said, was "unknown to our medical authorities, although its diagnostic symptom, the absconding from service, is well known to our planters and overseers" – in a paper delivered before the Medical Association of Louisiana that was widely reprinted. He stated that the malady was a consequence of masters who "made themselves too familiar with

laves Laves may refer to: * Fritz Laves (1906-1978), a German mineralogist and crystallographer, best known for his description of the intermetallic Laves phases. * Georg Ludwig Friedrich Laves Georg Ludwig Friedrich Laves (17 December 1788 – 30 ...

treating them as equals". In ''Diseases and Peculiarities of the Negro Race'', Cartwright says that the

Bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...

calls for a slave to be submissive to his master, and by doing so, the slave will have no desire to run away:

Prevention and remedy

In addition to identifying drapetomania, his feeling was that with "proper medical advice, strictly followed, this troublesome practice that many Negroes have of running away can be almost entirely prevented". In the case of slaves "sulky and dissatisfied without cause"—a warning sign of imminent flight—Cartwright mentioned "

whipping Flagellation (Latin , 'whip'), flogging or whipping is the act of beating the human body with special implements such as whips, rods, switches, the cat o' nine tails, the sjambok, the knout, etc. Typically, flogging has been imposed on ...

the devil out of them" as a "preventative measure".

Contemporary criticism

While Cartwright's article was reprinted in the South, in the

northern United States The Northern United States, commonly referred to as the American North, the Northern States, or simply the North, is a geographical or historical region of the United States. History Early history Before the 19th century westward expansion, the "N ...

it was widely mocked. A satirical analysis of the article appeared in a ''Buffalo Medical Journal'' editorial in 1855. Renowned landscape architect

Frederick Law Olmsted Frederick Law Olmsted (April 26, 1822August 28, 1903) was an American landscape architect, journalist, social critic, and public administrator. He is considered to be the father of landscape architecture in the USA. Olmsted was famous for co- ...

, in ''A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States'' (1856), observed that white

indentured servant Indentured servitude is a form of labor in which a person is contracted to work without salary for a specific number of years. The contract, called an " indenture", may be entered "voluntarily" for purported eventual compensation or debt repayment ...

s had often been known to flee as well, so he satirically hypothesized that the supposed disease was actually of white European origin, and had been introduced to Africa by traders.

References

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 ''DeBow's Review'' was a widely-circulated magazine "DEBOW'S REVIEW" (publication titles/dates/locations/notes), APS II, Reels 382 & 383, webpage of "agricultural, commercial, and industrial progress and resource" in the American South during ...

XI (1851). Available a
Google Books
and excerpted a

** 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 Georgetown University Press is a university press affiliated with Georgetown University that publishes about forty new books a year. The press's major subject areas include bioethics, international affairs, languages and linguistics, political sc ...

, 2004)

External links

An Early History – African American Mental Health
* * {{cite news , last1=Dimuro , first1=Gina , title=Southerners Actually Thought Slaves Escaping Was A Sign Of Mental Illness , url=https://allthatsinteresting.com/drapetomania , website=All That's Interesting , date=4 April 2018

Bibliography

*Katherine Bankole, Slavery and Medicine: Enslavement and Medical Practices in Antebellum Louisiana, New York: Taylor and Francis Group, 1998. *Bob Myers, "Drapetomania": Rebellion, Defiance and Free Black Insanity in the Antebellum United States, phD thesis, 2014. Scientific racism Obsolete medical terms Political abuses of psychiatry Obsolete terms for mental disorders Stereotypes of African Americans White supremacy in the United States Pseudoscience Mania Social problems in medicine Slavery in the United States Fugitive American slaves Race and health in the United States Psychiatric false diagnosis History of psychology Post-traumatic stress disorder