Samuel A. Cartwright

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.

Biography Born 1793 on 20 November, he was the son of the Reverend John Slye Cartwright He would go on to practice medicine across the south and gained a reputation as having an expertise in cholera prevention. The most notorious portions, on drapetomania and dysaesthesia aethiopica, were reprinted in DeBow's Review. He subsequently prepared an abbreviated version, with sources cited, for Southern Medical Reports.

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."

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.

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. 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."

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."

Cultural depictions

Cartwright was referenced in the 2004 film C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America. In the film, after the Confederate States of America wins the American Civil War, Cartwright's work forms the basis for the fictional Cartwright Institute for Freedom Illnesses, a medical school incorporating his theory on drapetomania and racist pseudoscientific theories about "negro peculiarities". Cartwright is also portrayed in the 1971 Mondo exploitation film Goodbye Uncle Tom alongside many other figures from the time. Notably, Cartwright is stated to be Jewish in the film, which he was not in reality. Cartwright is mentioned and appears, along with other historical personalities, in Season 7 of the series Outlander (TV series), based on the books by Diana Gabaldon.

Publications