Sickness and chains: the significance of enslaved patients
in antebellum Southern infirmaries
STEPHEN C. KENNY

THE DISSECTING HALL
Yuh see dat house? Dat great brick house?
Way yonder down de street?
Dey used to take dead folks een dar
Wrappedeen a long white sheet.
An' sometimeswe'en a nigger'dstop,
A-wonderingwho was dead,
Dem stujentmen would take a club
An' bat 'im on de head.
An' drag dat poor dead niggerchile
Right een dat 'sectin hall
To vestigate 'is liver-lights-
His gizzardan' 'is gall.
Tek off dat nigger'shan's an' feet-
His eyes, his head, an' all,
An' w'en dem stujent finish
Dey was nothin' left at all.36

The Use of Blacks for Medical Experimentation and Demonstration in the Old South
Author(s): Todd L. Savitt

Constructing the Slave Body

a mental illness
(credited to Dr. Sam Cartwright in the 19th century) that caused black slaves to run away from plantations

“Cured” by repeated whippings

caused blacks to suffer from sleepiness, dry skin, lesions, insensitivity to pain, mischievous behavior

The Psychiatry of Slavery

Drapetomania

Dysaethesia aethiopica:

cuerpos esclavos - materia prima de experimentación medico quirúrgica

cuando el último barco cruzó el atlántico con el último cargamentgo de esclavos, la necesidad de cuidar de su integridad fisica, repararlos y lograr reproductoras sanas se convirtio en prioridad para mantener el creado poder racial

hospitales eran sitios de cautiverio, mantenimiento y comercio de esclavos

tambien se convirtieron en los centros de experimentación quirurgica y farmaceutica.
escuelas de anatomia, bancos de cuerpos para disecar y estudiar.