1764 GRAINGER, James (1721 – 1766)
An essay on the more common West-India diseases and the remedies which that country itself produces: To which are added some hints on the management, &c. of negroes.
Though the title suggests tropical medicine in general, this work mainly concerns the selection and medical care of slaves. Digital facsimile of the second edition (Edinburgh, 1802) expanded "with practical notes and …
GMN 9509 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/11694
1776 DAZILLE, Jean Barthélémy (1733 – 1812)
Observations sur les maladies des nègres, leurs causes, leurs traitemens et les moyens de les prévenir.
Study of the health conditions and diseases of black slaves in the Americas. Digital facsimile of the 1776 edition from Google Books at this link. Second edition, expanded to two volumes. Paris: L'Auteur, 1792.
GMN 1601.1 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/1723
1786 BERTIN, Antoine de (1752 – 1790)
Des moyens de conserver la santé des blancs et des négres, aux Antilles ou climats chauds et humides de l'Amerique. Contenant un exposé des causes des malades propres....
Bertin practiced medicine in the West Indies, and wrote about the physical effects of the voyage there, the causes of diseases and their cures, and the effects of the Caribbean climate and humidity on health. The impr…
GMN 11099 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/13295
1788 DAZILLE, Jean Barthélémy (1733 – 1812)
Observations sur le tétanos; Ses différences, ses causes, ses symptômes, avec le traitement de cette maladie & les moyens de la prévenir. Précédées d'un discours sur les moyens de perfectionner la médecine-pratique sous la zone torride. Suivies d'observations sur la santé des femmes enceintes dans ces régions; leurs maladies aux différentes époques de la grossesse; l'accouchement & les suites; la conservation des nouveau-nés jusqu'à l'adolescence. Terminées par le rapprochement des vices & des abus des hôpitaux d'entre les tropiques, & les moyens d'y remédier. Par M. Dazille. Pour servir de développement & de suite à ce que cet auteur a écrit du tétanos dans ses ouvrages sur les maladies des nègrse [sic], & sur les maladies des climats chauds.
Primarily concerning the diseases of black slaves. Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.
GMN 8216 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/10392
1788 ARTHAUD, Charles (1748 – 1791); CERCLE DES PHILADELPHES
Recherches, mémoires et observations sur les maladies épizootiques de Saint-Dominique, recueillis & publiés par le Cercle des Philadelphes du Cap-François.
The Cercle des Philadelphes, of which Charles Arthaud was president, was an academic scientific society in Saint-Domingue, in existence between 1784 and 1791. It was the most prominent academic society in the Americas…
GMN 9896 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/12084
1788 FALCONBRIDGE, Alexander (1760 – 1791)
An account of the slave trade on the coast of Africa.
Falconbridge was a surgeon in the slave trade before becoming an abolitionist. Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.
GMN 10813 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/13009
1788 BOURGEOIS, Nicolas-Louis (1710 – 1776)
Voyages intéressans dans différentes colonies françaises, espagnoles, anglaises, &c; contenant des observations importantes relatives à ces contrées; & un mémoire sur les maladies les plus communes à Saint-Domingue, leurs remèdes, & le moyen de s'en préserver moralement & phisiquement: Avec des anecdotes singulières, qui n'avaient jamais été publiés....
The final section addresses maladies affecting the residents of Saint-Domingue. Unlike many of his contemporaries Bourgeois assiduously recorded the medical practices of the enslaved and subjugated African and Indigen…
GMN 13163 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/15422
1801 DANCER, Thomas (1750 – 1811)
The medical assistant, or Jamaica practice of physic: Designed chiefly for the use of families and plantations.
Digital facsimile from the U.S. National Library of Medicine at this link.
GMN 9897 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/12085
1802 FRANK, Louis (1761 – 1825)
Mémoire sur le commerce des nègres au Kaire et sur les maladies auxquelles ils sont sujets en y arrivant.
Digital facsimile from BnF Gallica at this link. Also published in Mémoires sur l'Egypte: ... Publiés dans les années VII, VIII et IX, Volume 4, (An X) pp. 125-156.
GMN 8204 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/10380
1803 WINTERBOTTOM, Thomas Masterman (1765 – 1859)
An account of the native Africans in the neighbourhood of Sierra Leone; to which is added, an account of the present state of medicine among them. 2 vols.
In his travels in Africa, Winterbottom, physician to the Colony of Sierra Leone (now Republic of Sierra Leone) on the west coast of Africa, saw sleeping sickness, which he described in vol. 2, pp. 29-31, as a species …
GMN 5266 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/8561
1803 COLLINS, David
Practical rules for the management and medical treatment of negro slaves in the sugar colonies
Collins, a British doctor and planter, spent fourteen years in the Caribbean island of Saint Vincent. Written from the utilitarian perspective of a master, this handbook on slave medicine was intended to maximize the …
GMN 8025 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/10201
1807 EWELL, James (1773 – 1832)
The planter's and mariner's medical companion: treating, according to the most successful practice, I. The diseases common to warm climates and on ship board. II. Common cases in surgery, as fractures, dislocations, &c. &c. III. The complaints peculiar to women and children. To which are subjoined a dispensatory, shewing how to prepare and administer family medicines, and a glossary giving an explanation of technical terms.
Ewell, then practicing in Savannah, Georgia, wrote this self-help book for southern residents, directing his book toward plantation owners. It was "the constant friend of a large number of slave-masters. In emergencie…
GMN 7049 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/9216
1814 CHARAULT, C. R.
Coup-d'oeil sur Saint-Domingue; observations sur le caractère des négres et sur la fièvre jaune; moyens de recouvrer cette colonie, et de se préserver des maladies qui y règnent.
Digital facsimile from patrimoines-martinique.org at this link.
GMN 8219 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/10395
1820 THOMSON, James
A treatise on the diseases of Negroes, as they occur in the island of Jamaica: with observations on the country remedies.
Digital facsimile from the National Library of Medicine, Internet Archive, at this link.
GMN 7055 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/9222
1826 RICORD, Jean Baptiste (1777 – 1837)
Recherches et expériences sur les poisons d'Amérique: Tirés des trois règnes de La nature, et envisagés sous les rapports de l'histoire naturelle, de la physiologie, de le pathologie et de la chimie, avec un essai sur l'empoisonnement par Les miasmes des marais, le mal d'estomac des nègres (cachexia Africana), et les maladies qui ressemblent aux empoisonnemens; pour servir à la toxicologie générale du continent d'Amérique et des Antilles.
GMN 13365 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/15636
1830 CALDWELL, Charles (1772 – 1853)
Thoughts on the original unity of the human race.
The first important American presentation of the case for polygenesis in support of slavery. Caldwell presented the first important American critique of the monogenist theories of human ancestry promoted by Samuel Sta…
GMN 13720 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/16004
1832 YATES, Christopher C. (1778 – 1848)
Observations on the epidemic now prevailing in the city of New-York; called the Asiatic or spasmodic cholera; with advice to the planters of the South, for the medical treatment of their slaves.
Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.
GMN 10812 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/13008
1835 WILSON, John R. W.
A case of introsussception in which an operation was successfully resorted to…in December, 1831.
First operation for intussusception in the United States, performed in Rutherford County, Tennessee. The patient was a negro slave; the operation was a complete success. Reported by Wilson’s pupil, W.W. Thompson.
GMN 3440.1 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/5440
1840 MORTON, Samuel George (1799 – 1851)
Catalogue of skulls of man, and the inferior animals, in the collection of Samuel George Morton.
Numbers 901-929 in Morton's catalogue are "Thirty Skulls of genuine unmixed NEGROES born in Africa. This interesting series series was collected by Don José Rodriguez Cisnerso, M. D. of Havana, in the island of Cuba, …
GMN 8828 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/11006
1858 HUTCHINSON, Thomas Joseph (1820 – 1885)
Impressions of Western Africa. With remarks on the diseases of the climate and a report on the peculiarities of trade up the rivers in the Bight of Biafra.
Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.
GMN 12482 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/14715
1918 PHILLIPS, Ulrich Bonnell (1877 – 1934)
American Negro slavery: A survey of the supply, employment and control of Negro labor as determined by the plantation régime.
Incudes information on health and medicine. Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.
GMN 8821 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/10999
1951 POSTELL, William Dosite (1908 – 1982)
The health of slaves on southern plantations.
Chiefly from contemporary MS records.
GMN 6596.1 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/8504
1969 HOEPPLI, Reinhard (1893 – 1973)
Parasitic diseases in Africa and the Western Hemisphere. Early documentation and transmission by the slave trade.
GMN 10675 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/12868
1978 SAVITT, Todd L. (1943 – )
Medicine and slavery. The diseases and health care of blacks in antebellum Virginia.
GMN 7047 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/9214
1984 KIPLE, Kenneth F. (1939 – 2016)
The Caribbean slave: A biological history.
GMN 7053 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/9220
1985 SHERIDAN, Richard B. (1918 – )
Doctors and slaves: A medical and demographic history of slavery in the British West Indies.
GMN 8820 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/10998
1986 STECKEL, Richard H. (1944 – )
A peculiar population: The nutrition, health, and mortality of American slaves from childhood to maturity.
Digital facsimile from Jstor and at this link.
GMN 7957 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/10132
1997 VOEKS, Robert A. (1950 – )
Sacred leaves of Candomblé: African magic, medicine, and religion in Brazil.
"Candomblé, an African religious and healing tradition that spread to Brazil during the slave trade, relies heavily on the use of plants in its spiritual and medicinal practices. When its African adherents were forcib…
GMN 9910 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/12098
1998 BANKOLE-MEDINA, Katherine
Slavery and medicine: Enslavement and medical practices in antebellum Louisiana.
GMN 8205 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/10381
1998 LETI, Geneviève
Santé et société esclavagiste à la Martinique.
GMN 9901 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/12089
1999 LIEBOWITZ, Daniel (1921 – 2014); KIRK, Sir John (1832 – 1922)
The physician and the slave trade: John Kirk, the Livingstone expeditions, and the crusade against slavery in East Africa.
GMN 8694 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/10871
2002 FETT, Sharla M.
Working cures: Healing, health, and power on Southern slave plantations.
GMN 9624 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/11811
2006 SCHWARTZ, Marie Jenkins (1946 – )
Birthing a slave: Motherhood and medicine in the Antebellum South.
GMN 8090 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/10266
2006 WASHINGTON, Harriet A.
Medical apartheid: The dark history of medical experimentation on Black Americans from colonial times to the present.
GMN 8092 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/10268
2006 WEAVER, Karol Kovalovich
Medical revolutionaries: The enslaved healers of eighteenth-century Saint Dominique.
GMN 9911 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/12099
2007 COVEY, Herbert C. (1949 – )
African American slave medicine: Herbal and non-herbal treatments.
GMN 7753 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/9925
2009 WRIGHT, David; PALMER, Steven; DE BARROS, Juanita
Health and medicine in the circum-Caribbean, 1800–1968. Edited by Juanita De Barros, Steven Palmer and David Wright.
GMN 9975 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/12164
2011 KIRK, Sir John (1832 – 1922); HAZELL, Alastair
The last slave market: Dr. John Kirk and the struggle to end the East African slave trade.
GMN 12421 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/14651
2012 WEINER, Marli F. (1953 – 2009); HOUGH, Mayzie
Sex, sickness, and slavery: Illness in the antebellum South.
GMN 8206 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/10382
2012 THOMAS, James G. Jr.; WILSON, Charles Reagan (1948 – )
The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Volume 22: Science and medicine. Edited by James G. Thomas, Jr. & Charles Reagan Wilson.
GMN 9977 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/12166
2013 SMITH, Billy G.
Ship of death: A voyage that changed the Atlantic world.
A multi-disciplinary account from the perspectives of the history of the slave trade, the anti-slavery movement and medical history, of the voyage of the Hankey, a small British ship that circled the Atlantic in 1792-…
GMN 9374 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/11557
2016 MUSTAKEEM, Sowande'
Slavery at sea: Terror, sex, and sickness in the middle passage.
GMN 10081 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/12270
2017 HOGARTH, Rana A.
Medicalizing blackness: Making racial difference in the Atlantic world, 1780-1840.
GMN 9907 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/12095
2017 TURNER, Sasha
Contested bodies: Pregnancy, childrearing, and slavery in Jamaica.
"It is often thought that slaveholders only began to show an interest in female slaves' reproductive health after the British government banned the importation of Africans into its West Indian colonies in 1807. Howeve…
GMN 12587 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/14826
2018 SENIOR, Emily
The Caribbean and the medical imagination, 1764-1834. Slavery, disease and colonial modernity.
GMN 11436 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/13635
2021 SMITH, Sean Morey; WILLOUGHBY, Christopher D. E.
Medicine and healing in the age of slavery. Edited by Sean Morey Smith & Christopher D. E. Willoughby.
GMN 14058 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/16368
2022 WILLOUGHBY, Christopher D. E.
Masters of health: Racial science and slavery in U.S. medical schools.
GMN 14059 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/16369