Drapetomania, the evil of flight
- New Orleans, United States 1851. Samuel A. The article Diseases and Peculiies of the Black Race, written by Dr. Cartwright, was published in the journal New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal. There he received the news of a disease he designated: his desire to escape from drapetomania or captivity. He assured that the alleged disease was widespread among black slaves and gave advice to prevent and cure it.
On the one hand, Cartwright was a well-trained physician. He began to study the trade as an apprentice of Dr. John Brewer. He later became a guest of Dr. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia and finally completed his studies at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He also worked as a surgeon to Andrew Jackson, the future president of the United States. On the other hand, he was an insane Confederate, he believed that black people were less than white and tried to prove it scientifically to fight the abolitionists.
“The white man,” he said in his article, “if, contrary to God’s will, he tries to elevate the black subject to his rank, or abuses the power that God has given him in the other man [...], the black man escapes, but if his owner retains the slave in the place that the Bible tells us, that is, in submission, and if his owner is merciful and merciful, he can adapt to his desires.
Thus, he did not blame the slaves, but the owners who “mistreat them and have them alike.” “You have to act with them as if they were children to prevent and heal the desire to flee.” If the escape of a slave was nearby, he recommended as “preventive measure” “the exhumation of the inner devil”. But sometimes prevention wasn't enough, and he recommended thumb amputation in severe cases so the slave couldn't run away.
Cartwright also considered the "laziness" of slaves as a mental pathology, and named it: Dysaesthesia aethiopica.
Despite the widespread dissemination of his theories in the states of the south of the EE.UU, in the north they laughed at their theories. The architect Frederick Law Olmsted wrote in 1856 that white workers were also prone to flight and that evil was probably brought to Africa by European merchants.
Washington (EE.UU. ), 1807. The US Constitution banned transatlantic slave trade. This does not mean that slavery has been abolished, but that the main source of the slaves has been interrupted. Thus, slave women became the only way to “produce” new slaves.
So in 1845, in... [+]
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