~Update from our 2021 Education Resources Fellow, Aja Lans!
Hello all! I am partway through my time as the MHL’s Education Resources Fellow and have updates on my research into race and equity in healthcare. There are discussions of sensitive topics in this blog, many of which pertain to historical discussions of members of the African diaspora.
Any research pertaining to the history of race is challenging, as the meaning of “race” is constantly in flux. Humans do not fit into neat biological categories based on race, and yet the concept has dominated studies of diversity for centuries. Searching through the MHL to identify sources on the topic takes time and a lot of trial and error. While today we might use descriptors such as “people of color,” “Black,” or “African American,” not so long ago we would replace these words and phrases with terms such as “Negro” and “slave.” The same goes for medical terminology. For example, the disease we now know as tuberculosis used to be called “consumption” and “phthisis.” Therefore, I constantly try different words and phrases to locate materials on the history of race and health.
I am compiling these resources based on broad themes/time periods so that they are more easily accessible to those of you interested in learning this history:
- Diseases of slavery
- The Negro Health Problem
- Early physical anthropology
- Eugenics and human experimentation
I am currently working on a journal article that focuses on the history of mental health in the Black community. This inspired me to locate resources pertaining to the health of enslaved people in antebellum America. Take the research of Dr. Samuel Cartwright (1793-1863) who diagnosed self-emancipated Black people with “drapetomania,” or the disease that caused the enslaved to run away.
My research on Black life after emancipation was the starting point for investigating “The Negro Health Problem” in historic medical literature. This phrase was popularized in a paper written by physician L.C. Allen in 1915 in which he argued
“It is undoubtedly true that the negro race has deteriorated physically and morally since slavery times. In some ways he is perhaps more intelligent, but freedom has not benefited his health, nor improved his morals. There is more sickness and inefficiency and crime among them now than before the war. All old physicians tell us that in slavery time consumption was practically unknown among the negro race. This fact, I believe, is thoroughly established.”
Essentially, after emancipation certain diseases became more prevalent in Black communities, including tuberculosis and rickets. Instead of acknowledging that such illnesses were due structural inequalities including but not limited to discrimination, subpar segregated housing, and poor working conditions, Black people were accused of being vectors of disease due to a lack of moral and physical hygiene.
As an anthropologist, I also have to include a set on the role early physical anthropologists played in creating and maintaining notions of race. Anthropologists defined types of people by studying the bodies of both the living and the dead and classifying humans. Studies of cranial features, skin color, and hair type and form were common. These types of studies would bolster eugenics, or the theory of race improvement.
Curating collections on this topic has been both challenging and rewarding. I still have quite a bit of work to do, and I look forward to sharing the finished sets with you in the fall!