Samuel A. Cartwright

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Samuel A. Cartwright
Samuel Cartwright
Born
Samuel Adolphus Cartwright

(1793-11-03)November 3, 1793
Fairfax County, Virginia
DiedMay 2, 1863(1863-05-02) (aged 69)
Jackson, Mississippi
EducationUniversity of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
OccupationPhysician
Known forCoining "drapetomania"
SpouseMary Wren

Samuel Adolphus Cartwright (November 3, 1793 – May 2, 1863) was an American medical doctor who practiced in Mississippi and Louisiana in the antebellum United States. Cartwright is best known for promoting the pseudoscientific concept of drapetomania, which falsely pathologized enslaved people's desire for freedom, and for publicly rejecting germ theory.[1][2]

Biography

Born 1793 on 20 November,[3] he was the son of the Reverend John Slye Cartwright[3] and Ann "Nancy" Trammell. Cartwright's mother came from a family that enslaved African Americans in Loudoun County, Virginia.

Cartwright studied medicine under Benjamin Rush at the University of Pennsylvania.[4] He would go on to practice medicine across the south and gained a reputation as having an expertise in cholera prevention.[4]

Cartwright married Mary Wren of Natchez, Mississippi, in 1825.[5][3] The Wren family enslaved African Americans, and Wren brought eight enslaved women into the marriage as property under the legal regime of slavery. Cartwright’s social status increased after joining the enslaving planter class, and he accumulated wealth through the cotton economy, which depended heavily on enslaved labor. Cartwright would, however, go bankrupt in 1837.

During the American Civil War, he was a physician in the Confederate States Army. He served in camps near Vicksburg and Port Hudson.[5] He was assigned to improve the sanitary conditions for the soldiers.[5]

Slavery

The Medical Association of Louisiana tasked Cartwright with studying what white Southern physicians at the time described as "the diseases and physical peculiarities of the negro race". His report was delivered as a speech at its annual meeting on March 12, 1851, and published in its journal.[6] The most notorious portions, on drapetomania and dysaesthesia aethiopica, were reprinted in DeBow's Review.[7] He subsequently prepared an abbreviated version, with sources cited, for Southern Medical Reports.[8]

Cartwright argued that enslaved people who resisted enslavement or attempted escape should be physically punished: "If they nonetheless became dissatisfied with their condition, they should be whipped to prevent them from running away."[7] In describing his theory and cure for drapetomania, Cartwright invoked pro-slavery interpretations of Christian scripture to defend slavery and justify his theories.[9]

Cartwright falsely promoted racist pseudoscientific claims that Black people had 10% smaller brains than those of white people, and that their respiratory and skeletal systems were structured differently.[10]

Furthermore, Cartwright described the condition of 'genu fluxit', in which enslaved people were expected to display submission and deference toward enslavers. The condition could be lost, though, if enslavers treated enslaved people overly harshly and denied basic privileges. Rather than just arguing to treat enslaved people negatively overall, he advocated a paternalistic view that treated enslaved adults as inherently childlike and subordinate.[11][9]

Cartwright also invented another purported 'disorder', dysaesthesia aethiopica, a disease "affecting both mind and body"; Cartwright used the theory to rationalize racist stereotypes portraying enslaved people as inherently lazy or disobedient.[12] Dysaesthesia aethiopica, "called by overseers 'rascality'", was characterized by partial insensitivity of the skin and "so great a hebetude of the intellectual faculties, as to be like a person half asleep." Other symptoms included "lesions of the body discoverable to the medical observer, which are always present and sufficient to account for the symptoms."[13][14]

Cartwright further claimed that dysaesthesia aethiopica was "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." — indeed, according to Cartwright, "nearly all [free negroes] are more or less afflicted with it, that have not got some white person to direct and to take care of them."[11]

Cultural depictions

Publications

References

Citations

  1. Miller, Randall M.; John David Smith (1997). Dictionary of Afro-American Slavery. Westport: Praeger. ISBN 0-313-23814-6.
  2. Homoeopathic Medical College of Missouri (1888). The Clinical Reporter. Vol. 1. p. 320. Retrieved June 20, 2015.
  3. Ownby, Ted; Wilson, Charles Reagan; Abadie, Ann J.; Lindsey, Odie; Jr, James G. Thomas (May 25, 2017). The Mississippi Encyclopedia. Univ. Press of Mississippi. ISBN 978-1-4968-1157-8.
  4. Weiner, Marli F. (July 30, 2012). Sex, Sickness, and Slavery: Illness in the Antebellum South. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-09407-1.
  5. "Samuel A. Cartwright and Family Papers", Mss. 2471, 2499, Inventory, Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collections, Special Collections, Hill Memorial Library, Louisiana State University Libraries, Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University, page 4.
  6. Cartwright, Samuel A. (May 1851a). "Report on the Diseases and Physical Peculiarities of the Negro Race". New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal: 691–715. Retrieved May 25, 2018.
  7. Cartwright, Ssmuel A. (July 1851b). "Diseases and Peculiarities of the Negro Race". DeBow's Review. Vol. 11, no. 1. pp. 64–74.
  8. Cartwright, Samuel A. (1851c). "The Diseases and Physical Peculiarities of the Negro Race". Southern Medical Reports. Vol. 2. pp. 421–429.
  9. Cartwright, Samuel. "Diseases and Peculiarities of the Negro Race". pbs.org.
  10. Washington, Harriet A. (2006). Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. U.S.: Doubleday. pp. 35–36. ISBN 978-0-385-50993-0.
  11. "Africans in America/Part 4/"Diseases and Peculiarities"". www.pbs.org. Retrieved January 3, 2026.
  12. Pilgrim, David. "Question of the Month: Drapetomania" Archived June 14, 2011, at the Wayback Machine. Jim Crow Museum. Jim Crow Museum, Ferris State University. November 2005.
  13. Paul Finkelman (1997). Slavery & the Law. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 305. ISBN 0-7425-2119-2.
  14. Rick Halpern, Enrico Dal Lago (2002). Slavery and Emancipation. Blackwell Publishing. p. 273. ISBN 0-631-21735-5.

Sources

Further reading

  • Davis, William C. (2002). "Men but Not Brothers". Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America. Simon & Schuster. pp. 130–162.
  • Marshall, Mary Louise (1940–1941). "Samuel A. Cartwright and States' Rights Medicine". New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal. 90.