The health of slaves on
American plantations was a matter of concern to both slaves and their owners. Slavery had associated with it the health problems commonly associated with poverty. It was to the economic advantage of owners to keep their working slaves healthy, and those of reproductive age reproducing. Those who could not work or reproduce because of illness or age were sometimes abandoned by their owners, expelled from plantations, and left to fend for themselves.
Life expectancy
A broad and common measure of the health of a population is its life expectancy. The life expectancy in 1850 of a white person in the United States was forty; for a slave, thirty-six.
Mortality statistics for whites were calculated from census data; statistics for slaves were based on small sample-sizes.
Diseases among slaves
European physicians in the
West Indies
The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Greater A ...
frequently shared their knowledge of black-related diseases with North American colleagues.
Diseases that were thought to be "negro diseases" included, but were not limited to:
*
tetanus
Tetanus, also known as lockjaw, is a bacterial infection caused by ''Clostridium tetani'', and is characterized by muscle spasms. In the most common type, the spasms begin in the jaw and then progress to the rest of the body. Each spasm usually ...
*
nascentium, or "nine day fits"
* high infant mortality
*
worms Worms may refer to:
*Worm, an invertebrate animal with a tube-like body and no limbs
Places
*Worms, Germany, a city
**Worms (electoral district)
*Worms, Nebraska, U.S.
*Worms im Veltlintal, the German name for Bormio, Italy
Arts and entertainme ...
*
diphtheria
Diphtheria is an infection caused by the bacterium '' Corynebacterium diphtheriae''. Most infections are asymptomatic or have a mild clinical course, but in some outbreaks more than 10% of those diagnosed with the disease may die. Signs and s ...
*
whooping cough
Whooping cough, also known as pertussis or the 100-day cough, is a highly contagious bacterial disease. Initial symptoms are usually similar to those of the common cold with a runny nose, fever, and mild cough, but these are followed by two or ...
*
cholera
Cholera is an infection of the small intestine by some strains of the bacterium ''Vibrio cholerae''. Symptoms may range from none, to mild, to severe. The classic symptom is large amounts of watery diarrhea that lasts a few days. Vomiting and ...
*
typhoid
Typhoid fever, also known as typhoid, is a disease caused by '' Salmonella'' serotype Typhi bacteria. Symptoms vary from mild to severe, and usually begin six to 30 days after exposure. Often there is a gradual onset of a high fever over several ...
*
tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, in ...
*
influenza
Influenza, commonly known as "the flu", is an infectious disease caused by influenza viruses. Symptoms range from mild to severe and often include fever, runny nose, sore throat, muscle pain, headache, coughing, and fatigue. These symptoms ...
*
hepatitis
Hepatitis is inflammation of the liver tissue. Some people or animals with hepatitis have no symptoms, whereas others develop yellow discoloration of the skin and whites of the eyes (jaundice), poor appetite, vomiting, tiredness, abdominal pa ...
*
rheumatism
Rheumatism or rheumatic disorders are conditions causing chronic, often intermittent pain affecting the joints or connective tissue. Rheumatism does not designate any specific disorder, but covers at least 200 different conditions, including art ...
* "
scabies
Scabies (; also sometimes known as the seven-year itch) is a contagious skin infestation by the mite ''Sarcoptes scabiei''. The most common symptoms are severe itchiness and a pimple-like rash. Occasionally, tiny burrows may appear on the skin ...
"
*
"frambesia" (yaws)
* ''lepra vulgaris'' and
psoriasis
Psoriasis is a long-lasting, noncontagious autoimmune disease characterized by raised areas of abnormal skin. These areas are red, pink, or purple, dry, itchy, and scaly. Psoriasis varies in severity from small, localized patches to complete ...
*
leprosy
Leprosy, also known as Hansen's disease (HD), is a long-term infection by the bacteria ''Mycobacterium leprae'' or ''Mycobacterium lepromatosis''. Infection can lead to damage of the nerves, respiratory tract, skin, and eyes. This nerve damag ...
*
syphilis
Syphilis () is a sexually transmitted infection caused by the bacterium ''Treponema pallidum'' subspecies ''pallidum''. The signs and symptoms of syphilis vary depending in which of the four stages it presents (primary, secondary, latent, an ...
While working on
plantations
A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. The ...
in the
Southern United States
The Southern United States (sometimes Dixie, also referred to as the Southern States, the American South, the Southland, or simply the South) is a geographic and cultural region of the United States of America. It is between the Atlantic Ocean ...
, many
slave
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 ...
s faced serious health problems. Improper
nutrition
Nutrition is the biochemical and physiological process by which an organism uses food to support its life. It provides organisms with nutrients, which can be metabolized to create energy and chemical structures. Failure to obtain sufficient n ...
, the unsanitary living conditions, and excessive labor made them more susceptible to diseases than their owners; the death rates among the slaves were significantly higher due to diseases.
Considered today to be abuse based on pseudo-science, two alleged mental illnesses of negros were described in scientific literature:
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 up ...
, the mental illness that made slaves desire to run away, and
dysaesthesia aethiopica
In psychiatry, dysaesthesia aethiopica ("Black (Ethiopian) bad feeling) was an alleged mental illness described by American physician Samuel A. Cartwright in 1851, which proposed a theory for the cause of laziness among slaves. Today, ''dysaesthe ...
, laziness or "rascality". Both were treated with whippings.
Slave diet
There are contrasting views on slave's diets and access to food. Some portray slaves as having plenty to eat, while others portray "the fare of the plantation
scoarse and scanty".
For the most part, slaves' diet consisted of a form of fatty pork and corn or rice.
Historian
U.B. Phillips found that slaves received the following standard, with little or no deviation: "a quart (1 liter) of cornmeal and half-pound (300 gm) of salt pork per day for each adult and proportionally for children, commuted or supplemented with sweet potatoes, field peas, syrup, rice, fruit, and 'garden sass'
egetables.
Scholars came to realize that the slave's diets were quantitatively satisfactory, but not qualitatively sufficient.
The poor quality of food led to slaves that were either "physically impaired or chronically ill".
Antebellum
Antebellum, Latin for "before war", may refer to:
United States history
* Antebellum South, the pre-American Civil War period in the Southern United States
** Antebellum Georgia
** Antebellum South Carolina
** Antebellum Virginia
* Antebellum ...
plantations had a larger population of hogs than cows, therefore producing more pork than beef.
There are a few reasons behind having more pigs than cows: a stereotype that slaves preferred pork over beef, pigs were easier to feed, beef was harder to preserve so it was typically only served fresh (which happened more often in the winter because the cold slowed spoiling), a fear of fresh meat because it was believed that it caused disease among blacks (which it was probably not that fresh), and the planters' conviction that "hog was the only proper meat for laborers".
Due to the shortage of cows, slave diets lacked milk. There was often a stereotype in the
antebellum South
In History of the Southern United States, the history of the Southern United States, the Antebellum Period (from la, ante bellum, lit=Status quo ante bellum, before the war) spanned the Treaty of Ghent, end of the War of 1812 to the start of ...
that slaves were
lactose intolerant
Lactose intolerance is a common condition caused by a decreased ability to digest lactose, a sugar found in dairy products. Those affected vary in the amount of lactose they can tolerate before symptoms develop. Symptoms may include abdominal ...
.
However, many slaves had trouble digesting lactose (in dairy products) because it was not a common staple in their diets.
Due to the scorching summer heat and the poor quality of the animals themselves, milk became a scarce product only available seasonally.
When it did become available, it was first given to whites and if any remained, then to slave children.
Additionally, there is some scientific hypotheses behind blacks more often being lactose intolerant than whites today. In West Africa, the presence of the
tsetse fly
Tsetse ( , or ) (sometimes spelled tzetze; also known as tik-tik flies), are large, biting flies that inhabit much of tropical Africa. Tsetse flies include all the species in the genus ''Glossina'', which are placed in their own family, Glo ...
made raising cattle practically impossible, creating a historical situation in which there was no need for humans to develop higher levels of the lactate enzyme (which allows the body to digest lactate).
Due to slaves' diets lacking quality, there were many vitamin and nutrient insufficiencies that lead to sicknesses. These were not recognized at the time as caused by poor diet.
*
Vitamin A deficiency
Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) or hypovitaminosis A is a lack of vitamin A in blood and tissues. It is common in poorer countries, especially among children and women of reproductive age, but is rarely seen in more developed countries. Nyctalopia (ni ...
led to weakened eyesight. (
Vitamin A
Vitamin A is a fat-soluble vitamin and an essential nutrient for humans. It is a group of organic compounds that includes retinol, retinal (also known as retinaldehyde), retinoic acid, and several provitamin A carotenoids (most notably bet ...
was not identified until the 20th century.)
* Lack of
milk
Milk is a white liquid food produced by the mammary glands of mammals. It is the primary source of nutrition for young mammals (including breastfed human infants) before they are able to digestion, digest solid food. Immune factors and immune ...
contributed to diseases such as
rickets
Rickets is a condition that results in weak or soft bones in children, and is caused by either dietary deficiency or genetic causes. Symptoms include bowed legs, stunted growth, bone pain, large forehead, and trouble sleeping. Complications may ...
and calcium deficiency, causing weakened bones.
* Inadequate iron led to
anemia
Anemia or anaemia (British English) is a blood disorder in which the blood has a reduced ability to carry oxygen due to a lower than normal number of red blood cells, or a reduction in the amount of hemoglobin. When anemia comes on slowly, th ...
.
Clothing
The masters only gave slaves pairs of "
gator shoes" or "
brogans" for footwear, and sometimes children and adults who were not working had to walk around barefoot. These clothes and shoes were insufficient for field work; they did not last very long for
field slaves. It is judged that the health of male workers broke down rapidly after they joined the field gangs.
Medical attentions
"Evidence exists that many...masters provided some health care for their slave investments.... Some planters employed doctors to come every two weeks to check on slaves' health and give them any needed medicine." This was quite lucrative for the physicians.
However, slave masters often tried to cure their ill slaves before they called for a doctor. Planters wishing to save money relied on their own self-taught skills and the help of their wives to address the health care needs of slaves.
Some Black people developed or retained from African heritage their own brand of care, complete with special remedies, medical practitioners, and rituals. If the home treatment did not help to improve the slave's condition, they would then send them to the
physician
A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...
or ask the doctor to come to the plantation. A slave who became ill meant loss of working time; death an even greater loss.
[Given the cost of slaves and their importance to plantation economies, planters organized slave hospitals to treat their serious health problems.][Stephen C. Kenny; "A Dictate of Both Interest and Mercy"? Slave Hospitals in the Antebellum South. J Hist Med Allied Sci 2010; 65 (1): 1-47. doi: 10.1093/jhmas/jrp019] There were also separate physicians for slaves and whites because it was believed that slaves' bodies were fundamentally different from whites'. Due to this thinking, many slaves became the subjects of physician's experimental interests to help expand both the physician's knowledge and reputation, often resulting in slave's mutilation and death.
Slave hospitals
Slave hospitals were thought to be an essential part of plantation life by Dr. A.P. Merrill and Dr. 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 ...
. The physicians believed that the slaves' bodies were biologically and physiologically different than whites, therefore they should have their own resource for medical attention and treatment. In some histories of the antebellum South
In History of the Southern United States, the history of the Southern United States, the Antebellum Period (from la, ante bellum, lit=Status quo ante bellum, before the war) spanned the Treaty of Ghent, end of the War of 1812 to the start of ...
, like William Scarborough's ''Masters of the Big House'' (2006), slaveholders are depicted as going to great lengths to protect the health of their slaves. Examples of this include vaccinating slave infants against smallpox
Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by variola virus (often called smallpox virus) which belongs to the genus Orthopoxvirus. The last naturally occurring case was diagnosed in October 1977, and the World Health Organization (WHO) c ...
, paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical expenses, and dispensing sherry
Sherry ( es, jerez ) is a fortified wine made from white grapes that are grown near the city of Jerez de la Frontera in Andalusia, Spain. Sherry is produced in a variety of styles made primarily from the Palomino grape, ranging from light versi ...
or madeira wine
Madeira is a fortified wine made on the Portuguese Madeira Islands, off the coast of Africa. Madeira is produced in a variety of styles ranging from dry wines which can be consumed on their own, as an apéritif, to sweet wines usually consumed ...
to sick slaves. Dr. Merrill provides a detailed description of what he thought slave hospitals should be like in an 1853 article about plantation hygiene. However, in reality, the hospitals were representations of the way slaves were viewed: as chattel. They were often a slave cabin used to isolate those with a fever or illness to make sure that the slave was not faking an illness in an attempt to run away. Frances Kemble's recollection of the slave infirmary at Butler Island, Georgia, paints a stark reality of slave women lying on the floor in "tattered and filthy blankets". Dr. J. Marion Sims
James Marion Sims (January 25, 1813November 13, 1883) was an American physician in the field of surgery. His most famous work was the development of a surgical technique for the repair of vesicovaginal fistula, a severe complication of obstruc ...
set up, in his back yard in Montgomery, Alabama
Montgomery is the capital city of the U.S. state of Alabama and the county seat of Montgomery County. Named for the Irish soldier Richard Montgomery, it stands beside the Alabama River, on the coastal Plain of the Gulf of Mexico. In the 202 ...
,the first hospital in the United States for black females, on whom he developed techniques and materials (silver suture) for gynecological surgery. In the later 20th century, Sims' surgical experimentation on enslaved women, who could not consent because they could not refuse, was criticized as unethical.
Experimentation
Southern medical education's predisposition for use of black bodies to teach anatomy and be subjects of clinical experiments was dangerous and invasive and led to a major distrust of white physicians among slaves. The exploitation of slave's bodies for medical knowledge created a horrific doctor-patient relationship that involved a third party: the slave owner. This relationship often left the slave voiceless and deemed "medically incompetent", therefore taking control of their own bodies away from them.
Gynecology
A major field of experimentation that involved slaves was gynecology
Gynaecology or gynecology (see spelling differences) is the area of medicine that involves the treatment of women's diseases, especially those of the reproductive organs. It is often paired with the field of obstetrics, forming the combined are ...
under Dr. J. Marion Sims
James Marion Sims (January 25, 1813November 13, 1883) was an American physician in the field of surgery. His most famous work was the development of a surgical technique for the repair of vesicovaginal fistula, a severe complication of obstruc ...
in Montgomery, Alabama
Montgomery is the capital city of the U.S. state of Alabama and the county seat of Montgomery County. Named for the Irish soldier Richard Montgomery, it stands beside the Alabama River, on the coastal Plain of the Gulf of Mexico. In the 202 ...
between 1845 and 1849. Dr. Sims is known for being a pioneer in the treatment of clubfoot
Clubfoot is a birth defect where one or both feet are rotated inward and downward. Congenital clubfoot is the most common congenital malformation of the foot with an incidence of 1 per 1000 births. In approximately 50% of cases, clubfoot aff ...
, advances in "women's medicine", his role in the founding of the Women's Hospital in New York, and as the "father of American gynecology". Sims routinely operated on nine slave women, of which only three are known: Anarcha, Betsy, and Lucy. The purpose of the operations was to try and fix conditions called vesico-vaginal fistula and recto-vaginal fistula, i.e. a tear in the vaginal wall resulting in chronic leakage from the bladder or colon. These conditions were common results of childbirth during Sims' time. However, these conditions do not include symptoms of chronic pain, just discomfort and most likely embarrassment, suggesting that Sims was exaggerating their conditions to gain a competitive edge over his colleagues.
Betsy, Anarcha, and Lucy survived multiple attempts to fix their condition, and although Sims was able to close the fistula, small perforations remained after healing, leakage continued, and often the sutures became infected. It was not until after the thirtieth surgery that Sims was successful on Anarcha. During these surgeries, the women were not under anesthesia
Anesthesia is a state of controlled, temporary loss of sensation or awareness that is induced for medical or veterinary purposes. It may include some or all of analgesia (relief from or prevention of pain), paralysis (muscle relaxation), ...
, only an ineffective opium that resulted in constipation and nausea instead of anesthetic. After the success of Anarcha, many white women came to Sims to have the procedure, yet none of them endured a single operation, noting the intense pain associated with the surgery.
Other
Dr. Sims also performed other surgical experimentations on slaves, including facial operations.[James Marion Sims, "Osteo-Sarcoma of the Lower Jaw—Resection of the Body of the Bone. Cure," ''Am. J. Med. Sci.'', 1846, ''7:21'', 128–32; "Removal of the Superior Maxilla for a Tumour of the Antrum; Apparent Cure. Return of the Disease. Second Operation. Sequel," ''Am. J. Med. Sci.'', 1847, ''13:26'', 310–15. The term "heroic" generally refers to major operations undertaken in the era before anaesthesia or antisepsis.
] Slave owners came to Sims in last attempt efforts to save their investments. One particular case that was published in ''The American Journal of the Medical Sciences'' involved a slave named Sam whose owner thought he had a gumboil on his face that was a result of syphilis medication. Surgery was attempted on Sam before by another physician, but was unsuccessful because "at the first incision…Sam had leaped from is chair and absolutely refused to submit to further cutting". Sims knew of the attempted surgery and was "determined not to be foiled in the attempt" of his own. Sims attempted to dissect the patient's jaw-bone over the course of a forty-minute operation. In this time, Sims removed a tooth to make room and after unsuccessful attempts with a "small, long, narrow saw" and "Liston's bone forceps", Sims resorted to the chain-saw to remove the diseased bone. Infirmaries, like Sims', allowed physicians to be successful businessmen in the slavery-based Southern economy, but also to create professional reputations as clinical medical researchers.
See also
* Race and health in the United States
Research shows many health disparities among different racial and ethnic groups in the United States. Different outcomes in mental and physical health exist between all census-recognized racial groups, but these differences stem from different h ...
* House slave
A house slave was a slave who worked, and often lived, in the house of the slave-owner, performing domestic labor. House slaves performed largely the same duties as all domestic workers throughout history, such as cooking, cleaning, serving meals, ...
* Disease in colonial America
* Seasoning (slavery)
Seasoning, or The Seasoning, was the period of adjustment that slave traders and slaveholders subjected African slaves to following their arrival in the Americas. While modern scholarship has occasionally applied this term to the brief period of ...
* African American health
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...
* Slavery hypertension hypothesis The slavery hypertension hypothesis proposes that disproportionately high rates of hypertension among black people in the New World are due to selection bias preferring individuals who retain more sodium among black slaves during the Middle Passage. ...
* Weathering hypothesis
The weathering hypothesis was proposed to account for early health deterioration as a result of cumulative exposure to experiences of social, economic and political adversity. It is well documented that minority groups and marginalized communities ...
* Disability in American slavery
References
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Slave health on American plantations
Slavery in the United States
Health in the United States
Plantations in the United States
Race and health in the United States