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“ Immunities” Thought to be completely immune to malaria as well as yellow fever, smallpox, pellagra, typhoid, heat exhaustion Thought to be immune to physical, emotional pain Justified torture, maimings, beatings, brandings and the exposure to painful medical procedures Įxperiments Doctors did not ask consent or explain their reasoning or intent No formal ethical or legal codes for consent Experiments included everything from inflicted blistering “to see how deep black skin went” to involuntary sterilization to untried pharmaceuticals, innoculations, and dangerous surgeries Medical Racism 1839: Caucasians have larger skulls, brains 1851: Made up “black” diseases Drapetomania -desire to ecape Hebetude-shiftlessness or laziness Dysthesia Aethiopica -desire to destroy owners’ property Struma Africana -type of “black-only” tuberculosis Cachexia Africana -eating non-food substances Treatments for whites were thought to kill blacks Oral Culture “ Don’t let the lion tell the giraffe’s story” Stories of medical abuse dismissed as myth Cultural and political bias coupled with Western literary bias “ Race, culture and economics have trumped medical and scientific truths at every turn” Medical culture mirrors larger culture of inequality Īntebellum South Deadly triple confluence-the pathogens of North America, Europe, and Africa Subtropical climate, poor sanitation, public-heatlh vacuum, nutritional-deficiencies “ Treatments” nearly always ineffective, often harmful Mercury, arsenic, bloodletting Slaves often thought to be feigning illness Whipping or beating as “medicine” Medical Apartheid The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present By Harriet Washington