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, the desire of a slave for freedom, and an outspoken opponent of germ theory.[1][2]
Biography
Cartwright married Mary Wren of Natchez, Mississippi, in 1825.[3] During the American Civil War, he was a physician in the Confederate States Army and served in camps near Vicksburg and Port Hudson.[3] He was assigned with improving the sanitary conditions for the soldiers.[3]
Slavery
The Medical Association of Louisiana charged Cartwright with investigating "the diseases and physical peculiarities of the negro race". His report was delivered as a speech at its annual meeting on March 12, 1851, and published in its journal.[4] The most sensationalistic portions of it, on drapetomania and dysaesthesia aethiopica, were reprinted in DeBow's Review.[5] He subsequently prepared an abbreviated version, with sources cited, for Southern Medical Reports.[6]
"If they nonetheless became dissatisfied with their condition, they should be whipped to prevent them from running away."[5] In describing his theory and cure for drapetomania, Cartwright relied on passages of Christian scripture dealing with slavery.
Furthermore, Cartwright described the condition of 'genu fluxit', in which slaves exacted awe and reverence towards their master. The condition could be lost though if masters were to treat their slaves overly harshly and deny basic privileges. Rather than just arguing to treat slaves negatively overall, he desired to treat slaves somewhere in the middle, similar to how one would treat a child.[7]
Cartwright also invented another 'disorder', dysaesthesia aethiopica, a disease "affecting both mind and body." Cartwright used his theory to explain the perceived lack of work ethic among slaves.[8] 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."[9][10]
According to Cartwright, 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."
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.
"Thomas Roderick Dew". Defense of Slavery: Theorists of Racial Inequality. Miami-Dade County Public Schools. Archived from the original on July 19, 2011. Retrieved April 21, 2015.
