Running Away from Drapetomania: Samuel A. Cartwright, Medicine, and Race in the Antebellum South

In 1940, Mary Louise Marshall, then the librarian of Tulane University's Matas Medical Library, wrote an article that has shaped the historical understanding of Dr. Samuel A. Cartwright. Though Cartwright was a prominent physician and medical writer in antebellum New Orleans, historians mostly...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of southern history 2018-08, Vol.84 (3), p.579-614
Main Author: Willoughby, Christopher D. E
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
African Americans
Alligators
American culture
Antebellum period
Antebellum period, 1820-1861
Audiences
Biography
Cartwright, Samuel A
Colleges & universities
Disease
Essays
Health care industry
Historians
Historiography
Medical libraries
Medicine
Mythology
Offenses
Physicians
Punishment
Race
Slavery
Trends
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Summary:In 1940, Mary Louise Marshall, then the librarian of Tulane University's Matas Medical Library, wrote an article that has shaped the historical understanding of Dr. Samuel A. Cartwright. Though Cartwright was a prominent physician and medical writer in antebellum New Orleans, historians mostly remember him for his theories of drapetomania-the disease that caused slaves to run away; rascality-the disease that made slaves commit petty offenses; and dysaesthesia ethiopica-which made slaves "insensible and indifferent to punishment."1 Published in the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, Marshall's biography of the southern physician seeded the ground for a mythology of Cartwright that has helped define him in the historiography of race and medicine. According to Marshall, Cartwright studied under the country' s most famous doctor, founding father Benjamin Rush, first as an apprentice and then at the University of Pennsylvania, but never completed the degree. With this pedigree, Cartwright appeared to be on the path to becoming a leading physician in the United States. Marshall explained that later in his career Cartwright served as "Professor of Diseases of the Negro" in the Medical Department of the University of Louisiana (now Tulane University). The fact is that no record exists of Cartwright at the University of Pennsylvania, which means he certainly never received a degree from that institution.
ISSN:0022-4642
2325-6893
2325-6893
DOI:10.1353/soh.2018.0164