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

by Londa Schiebinger

Overview

In the natural course of events, humans fall sick and die. The history of medicine bristles with attempts to find new and miraculous remedies, to work with and against nature to restore humans to health and well-being. In this book, Londa Schiebinger examines medicine and human experimentation in the Atlantic World, exploring the circulation of people, disease, plants, and knowledge between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. She traces the development of a colonial medical complex from the 1760s, when a robust experimental culture emerged in the British and French West Indies, to the early 1800s, when debates raged about banning the slave trade and, eventually, slavery itself.

Massive mortality among enslaved Africans and European planters, soldiers, and sailors fueled the search for new healing techniques. Amerindian, African, and European knowledges competed to cure diseases emerging from the collision of peoples on newly established, often poorly supplied, plantations. But not all knowledge was equal. Highlighting the violence and fear endemic to colonial struggles, Schiebinger explores aspects of African medicine that were not put to the test, such as Obeah and vodou. This book analyzes how and why specific knowledges were blocked, discredited, or held secret.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781503602915
Publisher:	Stanford University Press
Publication date:	07/25/2017
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.90(w) x 9.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Londa Schiebinger is the John L. Hinds Professor of History of Science at Stanford University. She is the author of the award-winning Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World (2004), among many other works.

Table of 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

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

Editorial Reviews

"Engaging unique sources from both the English and French worlds, Londa Schiebinger untangles the complex relationships between European and local physicians, healers, plants, and slavery. Her work offers a deep dive into how the Atlantic World emerged as a crucible for medical innovation as well as pressing ethical questions."

Universityé Paris Nanterre - François Regourd

"By studying the West Indies as a 'center of calculation', Schiebinger offers a methodological and ideological model for a historiography capable of beginning the hard work of building up an archive of medical history conscious of its own racial and political imperatives."

The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory - Tita Chico

"Racism is the belief that certain people are not fully human, and that infamously opportunistic opinion is evident whenever some people are selected to be unwilling subjects of medical experimentation, as Londa Schiebinger makes clear in her important new study."

Harvard University - Joyce E. Chaplin

"[Schiebinger's] well-written and meticulously researched study offers a model of careful history, ever conscious of its own limitations....Her carefully argued pursuit of evanescent facts was a refreshing reminder that recounting the past is the least of the historian's duties; making sense of the past is more important, but so is acknowledging the limits to the sense that can be made."

ISIS Review - Jim Endersby

"Londa Schiebinger's insightful book provides us with a conceptual grid for understanding the production and distribution of medical knowledge and the ethics of experimentation, opening up many fertile new avenues for research."

University of Oxford - Mark Harrison

"Secret Cures of Slaves is a scholarly, well-illustrated monograph that draws on archival as well as printed sources. It makes a valuable contribution to knowledge of the history of medicine in the British and French West Indies and reveals its links across the Atlantic."

Hispanic American Historical Review - Linda A. Newson

"Secret Cures of Slaves is well organized and clearly written....Schiebinger guides the reader through her deeply researched argument, supplemented by her use of conceptual diagrams. She succeeds in reconstructing the flows of medical knowledge between Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean in the eighteenth century."

Western Folklore - Lauren Ducas

"In this urgent, probing and visually striking volume, Londa Schiebinger, one of the pioneers of feminist and colonial science studies, shifts our understanding of Enlightenment racial attitudes to the domain of the medical, making a vital contribution to the dynamic new wave of research on science and slavery in the Atlantic world."

Rutgers University - James Delbourgo

"Racism is the belief that certain people are not fully human, and that infamously opportunistic opinion is evident whenever some people are selected to be unwilling subjects of medical experimentation, as Londa Schiebinger makes clear in her important new study."—Joyce E. Chaplin, Harvard University

"In this urgent, probing and visually striking volume, Londa Schiebinger, one of the pioneers of feminist and colonial science studies, shifts our understanding of Enlightenment racial attitudes to the domain of the medical, making a vital contribution to the dynamic new wave of research on science and slavery in the Atlantic world."—James Delbourgo, Rutgers University

"Londa Schiebinger's insightful book provides us with a conceptual grid for understanding the production and distribution of medical knowledge and the ethics of experimentation, opening up many fertile new avenues for research."—Mark Harrison, University of Oxford

"Engaging unique sources from both the English and French worlds, Londa Schiebinger untangles the complex relationships between European and local physicians, healers, plants, and slavery. Her work offers a deep dive into how the Atlantic World emerged as a crucible for medical innovation as well as pressing ethical questions."—François Regourd, Universityé Paris Nanterre

"[Schiebinger's] well-written and meticulously researched study offers a model of careful history, ever conscious of its own limitations....Her carefully argued pursuit of evanescent facts was a refreshing reminder that recounting the past is the least of the historian's duties; making sense of the past is more important, but so is acknowledging the limits to the sense that can be made."—Jim Endersby, ISIS Review

"Secret Cures of Slaves is well organized and clearly written....Schiebinger guides the reader through her deeply researched argument, supplemented by her use of conceptual diagrams. She succeeds in reconstructing the flows of medical knowledge between Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean in the eighteenth century."—Lauren Ducas, Western Folklore

"Secret Cures of Slaves is a scholarly, well-illustrated monograph that draws on archival as well as printed sources. It makes a valuable contribution to knowledge of the history of medicine in the British and French West Indies and reveals its links across the Atlantic."—Linda A. Newson, Hispanic American Historical Review

"By studying the West Indies as a 'center of calculation', Schiebinger offers a methodological and ideological model for a historiography capable of beginning the hard work of building up an archive of medical history conscious of its own racial and political imperatives."—Tita Chico, The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory

From the Publisher

"Engaging unique sources from both the English and French worlds, Londa Schiebinger untangles the complex relationships between European and local physicians, healers, plants, and slavery. Her work offers a deep dive into how the Atlantic World emerged as a crucible for medical innovation as well as pressing ethical questions."

Université Paris Nanterre - François Regourd