Medical science in antebellum America was organized around a paradox: it presumed African Americans to be less than human yet still human enough to be viable as experimental subjects, as cadavers, and for use in the training of medical students. By taking a hard look at the racial ideas of both northern and southern medical schools, Christopher D. E. Willoughby reveals that racist ideas were not external to the medical profession but fundamental to medical knowledge. In this history of racial thinking and slavery in American medical schools, the founders and early faculty of these schools emerge as singularly influential proponents of white supremacist racial science. They pushed an understanding of race influenced by the theory of polygenesis-that each race was created separately and as different species-which they supported by training students to collect and measure human skulls from around the world. Medical students came to see themselves as masters of Black people's bodies through stealing Black people's corpses, experimenting on enslaved people, and practicing distinctive therapeutics on Black patients. In documenting these practices Masters of Health charts the rise of racist theories in U.S. medical schools, throwing new light on the extensive legacies of slavery in modern medicine.
Christopher D. E. Willoughby is a fellow at the Huntington Library and Harvard University. He is also editor of the book Medicine and Healing in the Age of Slavery.
"An important book, building on an emerging body of work focused on exploring the centrality of medicine to the construction of ideas about race in the nineteenth-century United States, the perpetuation of race-based slavery, and the expansion of capitalism throughout the nation. Willoughby's compelling study makes a valuable contribution to these historiographical fields, drawing much-needed attention to the complicity of northern medical schools in shaping ideas about race in an antebellum America and on shores beyond."--Journal of Southern History "...Highly thought-provoking and timely in understanding the history of U.S...The book makes a compelling connection between our experiences today and 19th-century medical training in the United States."--LAMPHHS's The Watermark "A compelling exploration of how ideas about race were constructed by American medical professionals in the nineteenth century and then used to increase their recognition as experts. . . [A] valuable addition to the historiography."--Journal of American History
