Secret Cures of Slaves: People, Plants, and Medicine in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World

251 Pages·2017·3.97 MB·English

by  Londa L Schiebinger

SECRET CURES OF SLAVES
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Londa Schiebinger
SECRET
CURES
of Slaves
people, plants, and medicine
in the eighteenth-century atlantic world
stanford university press • stanford california
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
©2017 by Londa Schiebinger. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University
Press.
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Schiebinger, Londa L., author.
Title: Secret cures of slaves : people, plants, and medicine in the eighteenth-century
Atlantic world / Londa Schiebinger.
Description: Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2017. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016049163 (print) | LCCN 2016051270 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781503600171 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781503602915 (pbk. : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781503602984 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Human experimentation in medicine—West Indies—History—18th
century. | Slaves—Health and hygiene—West Indies—History—18th century. |
Blacks—Medicine—West Indies—History—18th century. | Traditional medicine—
West Indies—History—18th century. | Tropical medicine—West Indies—History—
18th century.
Classification: LCC R853.H8 S3472017 (print) | LCC R853.H8 (ebook) |
DDC 610.72/408996073—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016049163
For Robert
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CONTENTS
List of Figures ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
Medical Experimentation in the Atlantic World 4
Human Subjects 5
The Taxonomy of Experiments 8
The Colonial Crucible 12
The Circulation of Knowledge 13
The Problem of Sources 14
1. The Rise of Scientific Medicine 19
Experimentation in the West Indies 21
The Science of Skin Color,
or the Physiological Niceties of Race 24
L’Homme Planté: Place Versus Race 35
2. Experiments with the Negro Dr’s Materia Medica 45
Bois Fer and the Circulation of Knowledge 50
The African Hypothesis 51
The European Hypothesis 57
The American Hypothesis 57
The Greater Atlantic Hypothesis 61
3. Medical Ethics 65
Ethics in Europe:
“To Help, or at Least to Do No Harm” 66
Ethics in the West Indies: The Question of Slaves 71
Who Goes First? Experiments with Cold Water 79
Slaves: A Protected Category? 86
viii Contents
4. Exploitative Experiments 91
Quier’s Smallpox Experiments 92
Thomson’s Yaws Experiments 99
Soldiers and Sailors 106
Children and the Poor in Europe 109
Are Bodies Interchangeable? The Medical Context 112
5. The Colonial Crucible: Debates over Slavery 117
Obeah and Sorcery 118
Experiments with Placebos 123
Outlawing Slave Medical Practitioners 126
The Professional Exclusion of Gens de Couleur Libres 130
Are Bodies Interchangeable? The Colonial Context 133
Advocating Better Living Conditions 139
Experiments with Breeding 142
Conclusion: The Circulation of Knowledge 147
The European Colonial Nexus 147
The African Slave Trade Nexus 153
The Amerindian Conquest Nexus 156
Agnotology and the Atlantic World Medical Complex 158
Appendix:
Featured British and French Doctors in the West Indies 167
Notes 169
Bibliography 203
Image Credits 223
Index 225
FIGURES
1. Atlantic World circa 1774. 2
2. The West Indies circa 1774. 3
3. The circulation of knowledge in the eighteenth-century
Atlantic World medical complex. 14
4. Cap-Français, Saint-Domingue, 1779. 23
5. Analysis of race, Médéric-Louis-Élie Moreau de Saint-Méry. 27
6. Thermometer circa 1800. 36
7. The first of Colin Chisholm’s six experimental groups. 39
8. Colin Chisholm’s six experimental groups. 40
9. An early image of yaws. 53
10. Entry for bois de fer, Jean-Baptiste Pouppé-Desportes. 58
11. Bois de fer, Jean-Baptiste-Christophe Fusée-Aublet. 60
12. West Gondwana. 61
13. Negro Dr as knowledge broker. 63
14. William Wright (1735–1819). 73
15. Plan of the hospital for sick slaves, Good Hope Estate,
Jamaica, circa 1798. 77
16. Edward Jenner’s lancet. 93
17. Burning of Cap-Français. 118
18. Elisha Perkins’s metallic tractors. 124
19. The European colonial nexus, the flow of knowledge
between Europe and the Americas. 148
20. The African slave trade nexus, the flow of knowledges, diseases,
people, medicines, and plants from Africa to the Americas. 154
21. The conquest nexus, Amerindian knowledge in the plantation
medical complex. 157
22. Agnotological barriers in the Atlantic World medical complex. 159
ix