Coerced Care: Thomas Thistlewood's Account of Medical Practice on Enslaved Populations in Colonial Jamaica, 1751–1786

Abstract

This essay uses the Thistlewood family papers as a health record for the enslaved population in Jamaica. It examines the medical aspects of Thistlewood's journals, contextualising them in the social, political and cultural environment in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Examples of his provisions for medical care throughout his life are investigated systematically. Through counts from the original documents, the author identifies a seasonal pattern of disease and mortality on large and small Jamaican plantations and estimates an infant mortality rate of approximately 420 per 1000 births for Jamaican infants born into slavery.What boots thy gold when bought so dear? Thy wond'rous scenes of flood and fall? When pale disease is gliding near, Isle of the West! what boot they all? 1 Colonial Jamaica was not known for the longevity of its inhabitants. Contemporary sources blamed the unhealthy climate for the white deaths and the cruelty of Jamaica's white population for the enslaved losses, asserting that if the slaves had been stronger and better 'managed' , the doctors expertly trained and the plantation owners more attentive, Jamaica's population would not have needed continual repletion. 2 Modern scholars, hindered by limitations of surviving sources, have posited many reasons for the island's toxicity: mistreatment of the enslaved; ignorance of good health practices or unfortunate environmental circumstances such as rampant infectious disease; misplaced cultural practices or malnutrition. In this search, a familiar source can help to reconstruct the factors contributing to high mortality in colonial Jamaica.Thomas Thistlewood, the educated second son of an English farmer, was both a perpetrator of the fouler aspects of Jamaican colonial society and its scribe. He arrived on