the mental illness of refusing to submit to slavery

In the annals of medical history, there are few tales as delightfully absurd as drapetomania, the “mental illness” that made running away from slavery a diagnosable condition. Because, you know,…

Samuel Adolphus Cartwright (“the most prominent physician, surgeon, and medical scientist in antebellum Mississippi”)

Samuel Adolphus Cartwright (November 3, 1793 – May 2, 1863) was an American physician who practiced in Mississippi and Louisiana in the antebellum United States. Cartwright is best known as the inventor of the ‘mental illness’ of drapetomania,…