![Samuelcartwright](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/Samuelcartwright.jpg)
In
psychiatry
Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of mental disorders. These include various maladaptations related to mood, behaviour, cognition, and perceptions. See glossary of psychiatry.
Initial psych ...
, dysaesthesia aethiopica ("Black (Ethiopian)
bad feeling) was an alleged
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 ...
described by
American
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
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 ...
in 1851, which proposed a theory for the cause of laziness among
slaves
Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
. Today, ''dysaesthesia aethiopica'' is not recognized as a disease, but instead considered an example of
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 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 ...
.
History
![Cicatrices de flagellation sur un esclave](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Cicatrices_de_flagellation_sur_un_esclave.jpg)
Found exclusively among
African American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
s, dysaesthesia aethiopica – called ''
rascality'' by the overseers – was characterized by partial insensitivity of the skin and "so great a
hebetude of the intellectual faculties, as to be like a person half asleep."
Other symptoms included "
lesion
A lesion is any damage or abnormal change in the tissue of an organism, usually caused by disease or trauma. ''Lesion'' is derived from the Latin "injury". Lesions may occur in plants as well as animals.
Types
There is no designated classifi ...
s of the body discoverable to the medical observer, which are always present and sufficient to account for the symptoms." Cartwright contended that the existence of dysaesthesia aethiopica was "clearly established by the most direct and positive testimony," but other doctors had failed to notice it because their "attention
adnot been sufficiently directed to the maladies of the negro race."
[
Cartwright felt that dysaesthesia aethiopica was "easily curable, if treated on sound physiological principles."][Caplan ''et al.'', p. 37.] Insensitivity of the skin was one symptom of the disease, so the skin should be stimulated:
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."
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."[
According to Cartwright, dysaesthesia aethiopica was "much more prevalent among free negroes living in clusters by themselves, than among ]slaves
Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
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 ree negroesare more or less afflicted with it, that have not got some white person to direct and to take care of them." He explicitly dismissed the opinion which assigned the causes of the "problematic" behaviour to the social situation of the slaves without further justifications: "he northern physicians
He or HE may refer to:
Language
* He (pronoun), an English pronoun
* He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ
* He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets
* He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...
ignorantly attribute the symptoms to the debasing influence of slavery on the mind."
See also
*Drapetomania
Drapetomania was a supposed mental illness that, in 1851, American physician Samuel A. Cartwright hypothesized as the cause of enslaved Africans fleeing captivity. This hypothesis centered around the belief that slavery was such an improvement u ...
, 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
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 ...
*Minority stress
Minority stress describes high levels of stress faced by members of stigmatized minority groups. It may be caused by a number of factors, including poor social support and low socioeconomic status; well understood causes of minority stress are in ...
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, 2004) {{ISBN, 1-58901-014-0.
External links
Scientific racism
Obsolete medical terms
Political abuses of psychiatry
Obsolete terms for mental disorders
Stereotypes of African Americans
Social problems in medicine
Slavery in the United States
Pseudoscience
Race and health in the United States
Psychiatric false diagnosis
History of psychology
Post-traumatic stress disorder