Masters of Health - by Christopher Willoughby (Paperback)

About the Book

"Medical science in antebellum America was organized around a paradox: it presumed African Americans to be less than human yet still human enough to be viable as experimental subjects, as cadavers, and for use in the training of medical students. By taking a hard look at the racial ideas of both northern and southern medical schools, Christopher D.E. Willoughby reveals that racist ideas were not external to the medical profession but fundamental to medical knowledge"--

Book Synopsis

Medical science in antebellum America was organized around a paradox: it presumed African Americans to be less than human yet still human enough to be viable as experimental subjects, as cadavers, and for use in the training of medical students. By taking a hard look at the racial ideas of both northern and southern medical schools, Christopher D. E. Willoughby reveals that racist ideas were not external to the medical profession but fundamental to medical knowledge.

In this history of racial thinking and slavery in American medical schools, the founders and early faculty of these schools emerge as singularly influential proponents of white supremacist racial science. They pushed an understanding of race influenced by the theory of polygenesis--that each race was created separately and as different species--which they supported by training students to collect and measure human skulls from around the world. Medical students came to see themselves as masters of Black people's bodies through stealing Black people's corpses, experimenting on enslaved people, and practicing distinctive therapeutics on Black patients. In documenting these practices Masters of Health charts the rise of racist theories in U.S. medical schools, throwing new light on the extensive legacies of slavery in modern medicine.

Review Quotes

"Willoughby's debut monograph makes an important contribution both to histories of medical education and to the historicization of current racialized disparities in healthcare. . . . [A] thorough and expansive piece of scholarship, adding much to our understanding of the history of race and medicine in the US context. . . . [T]his work forms a key foundation on which assessments of how these theories of racial difference and hierarchy have embedded themselves within the modern medical curriculum, and medical research practices can build."--British Journal for the History of Science

"Willoughby provides us with a helpful set of analytics through which to understand how American medical racism and scientific racism grew up together, functioning as a transfer of Southern slavery ideology to the North, reinforcing the institution of slavery in the South, and spurring the evolution of polygenetic conceptions of race as a biological truth."--Technology and Culture

"An important book, building on an emerging body of work focused on exploring the centrality of medicine to the construction of ideas about race in the nineteenth-century United States, the perpetuation of race-based slavery, and the expansion of capitalism throughout the nation. Willoughby's compelling study makes a valuable contribution to these historiographical fields, drawing much-needed attention to the complicity of northern medical schools in shaping ideas about race in an antebellum America and on shores beyond."--Journal of Southern History

"...Highly thought-provoking and timely in understanding the history of U.S...The book makes a compelling connection between our experiences today and 19th-century medical training in the United States."--LAMPHHS's The Watermark

"A compelling exploration of how ideas about race were constructed by American medical professionals in the nineteenth century and then used to increase their recognition as experts. . . [A] valuable addition to the historiography."--Journal of American History

About the Author

Christopher D.E Willoughby is visiting professor of the history of medicine and health at Pitzer College. He is also editor of the book Medicine and Healing in the Age of Slavery.