The Health of Slaves and the Health of Freedmen: A Savannah Study

Lee, Anne S.; Lee, Everett S.

doi:10.2307/274680

Cited by 6 publications

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“…Records for Savannah, a city close to Augusta, from 1843 to 1869 provide us with data on the causes of death among the black population (Lee and Lee, 1977). Drownings, gunshot wounds, and burns were frequent.…”

Section: The Bones In the Basement Of The Medical College Of Georgiamentioning

confidence: 99%

The poor, the Black, and the marginalized as the source of cadavers in United States anatomical education

Halperin

2007

Clinical Anatomy

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When the practice of hands-on anatomical dissection became popular in United States medical education in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, demand for cadavers exceeded the supply. Slave bodies and thefts by grave robbers met this demand. Members of the public were aware that graves were being robbed and countered with various protective measures. Since the deterrence of grave robbing took time and money, those elements of society who were least economically and socially advantaged were the most vulnerable. Enslaved and free African Americans, immigrants, and the poor were frequently the target of grave robbing. The politically powerful tolerated this behavior except when it affected their own burial sites. Slave owners sold the bodies of their deceased chattel to medical schools for anatomic dissection. Stories of the ''night doctors'' buying and stealing bodies became part of African American folklore traditions. The physical and documentary evidence demonstrates the disproportionate use of the bodies of the poor, the Black, and the marginalized in furthering the medical education of white elites. Clin. Anat. 20:489-495, 2007. V V C 2007 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

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Section: The Bones In the Basement Of The Medical College Of Georgiamentioning

confidence: 99%

The poor, the Black, and the marginalized as the source of cadavers in United States anatomical education

Halperin

2007

Clinical Anatomy

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“…His work tends to corroborate suspicions that very high death rates did indeed prevail among the slave young. Other recent investigations of the slaves' biological past in the United States include the Lee and Lee (1977) study of the health of blacks as slaves and freemen in Savannah, David Whitten's (1977) comparison of slave health in Louisiana with that of the South Carolina low country, Kulikoff s (1977) examination of the demographic forces at work among eighteenthcentury slaves on the Chesapeake, the Cardell and Hopkins (1978) study of the phenomenon of lactose intolerance among the slaves, Johnson's (1981) continuation of the search for an explanation for the smothered slave infant, Angel's and Kelley's (1983) look at the health of colonial iron worker slaves, John Campbell's (1984) important insights into the continuing and vexing questions of slave infant mortality, and Jill Dubish's (1985) reminder of the importance of malaria in shaping slavery in South Carolina. Other anthropologists whose findings derived from sorting through plantation artifacts are helping to shed important light on the black's biological past in North America include Fairbanks (1984), Reitz and colleagues (1985), and Rathbun (1986).…”

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A Survey of Recent Literature on the Biological Past of the Black

Kiple¹

1986

Social Science History

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It was evident from the very beginning of the colonization of the Americas that the West African had experienced a biological past which differed in significant ways from that of other peoples. For in that beginning, dead Indians began accumulating “in heaps, like bedbugs” as they succumbed to diseases that accompanied the Spanish Conquistadores and their animals from Iberia. But the black slaves who accompanied them as well, did not die, or rather, the Spaniards temporized, “if we did not hang a Negro, he would never die.” In addition to this immunologic hardiness, the black was physically sturdier. Common wisdom had it that he could do the work of four Indians.

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Human Experimentation and Research: A Brief Historical Overview

Textbook of Research Ethics

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The Health of Slaves and the Health of Freedmen: A Savannah Study

Cited by 6 publications

References 0 publications

The poor, the Black, and the marginalized as the source of cadavers in United States anatomical education

The poor, the Black, and the marginalized as the source of cadavers in United States anatomical education

A Survey of Recent Literature on the Biological Past of the Black

Human Experimentation and Research: A Brief Historical Overview

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