March 17, 1851 – White Southern Physician Claims Discovery of Disease Making Blacks Want to Escape Slavery

Samuel Cartwright was a physician born in 1793 who practiced in in Mississippi and Louisiana in the antebellum United States. He is infamous today for “identifying” the “disease” of “drapetomania” or “the disease causing negroes to run away.” According to Cartwright:

It is unknown to our medical authorities, although its diagnostic symptom, the absconding from service, is well known to our planters and overseers… The cause in the most of cases, that induces the negro to run away from service, is as much a disease of the mind as any other species of mental alienation, and much more curable, as a general rule. With the advantages of proper medical advice, strictly followed, this troublesome practice that many negroes have of running away, can be almost entirely prevented, although the slaves be located on the borders of a free state, within a stone’s throw of the abolitionists.”

Cartwright first announced the “discovery” of this disease at a meeting of the Medical Association of Louisiana on this date. He also announced the disease of “Dysaesthesia Aethiopica” or “Rascality” that was “peculiar to negroes.”

He claimed:

Dysaesthesia Aethiopica is a disease . . . affecting both mind and body. . . . It is much more prevalent among free negroes living in clusters by themselves, than among slaves on our plantations, and attacks only such slaves as live like free negroes in regard to diet, drinks, exercise, etc.”

He went on to aver:

From the careless movements of the individuals affected with the complaint, they are apt to do much mischief, which appears as if intentional, but is mostly owing to the stupidness of mind and insensibility of the nerves induced by the disease. Thus, they break, waste and destroy everything they handle,–abuse horses and cattle,–tear, burn or rend their own clothing, and, paying no attention to the rights of property, steal others, to replace what they have destroyed. They wander about at night, and keep in a half nodding sleep during the day. They slight their work,–cut up corn, cane, cotton or tobacco when hoeing it, as if for pure mischief. They raise disturbances with their overseers and fellow-servants without cause or motive, and seem to be insensible to pain when subjected to punishment.”

He dismissed the skepticism of northern doctors:

…northern physicians and people have noticed the symptoms, but not the disease from which they spring. They ignorantly attribute the symptoms to the debasing influence of slavery on the mind without considering that those who have never been in slavery, or their fathers before them, are the most afflicted, and the latest from the slave-holding South the least. The disease is the natural offspring of negro liberty–the liberty to be idle, to wallow in filth, and to indulge in improper food and drinks.”

As the Equal Justice Initiative reports:

Citing “scientific” evidence and scripture, Dr. Cartwright argued that ‘the Negro is a slave by nature and can never be happy . . . in any other condition.’ . . .Dr. Cartwright explained the disease as a mental affliction triggered by masters who unwisely treat their slaves as equals and prescribed severe whipping and amputation of the toes as cures.”

Cartwright’s theories were cited by other Southerners as “scientific” justification for the institution of slavery.