Masters of Health: Racial Science and Slavery in US Medical Schools

by Christopher Willoughby

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.

Genres: History, Science

288 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2022

Reviews

[Brandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this book after hearing about Willoughby's research on the Warren Anatomical Museum and learned a lot of about the history of not just racial science in American medical institutions, but American medical history overall. The author does an excellent job of clearly defining his argument and citing from a rich set of archival sources. His argument is a convincing one, and helped me understand the intersection of slavery, medicine, imperialism, and globalization in the 19th century.

Willoughby mentions two other authors I'm familiar with, Dierdre Cooper Owens and Jim Downs. The scholarly impact of their work is clear in Masters of Health, and I think this text is favorably added to a growing body of medical histories related to race and slavery. Certainly, this text is a valuable read for researchers or students interested in those ideas.

The organization and flow of the book was occasionally a struggle for me. Willoughby's arguments are rich enough that his evidence often supports multiple subarguments, and interpreting them fully can sometimes create a whirling effect where the reader spins back and forth from these points. While I learned more from the text because of the overall thematic organization, the flow from paragraph to paragraph was sometimes more difficult.

I would highly recommend this book to fans of Cooper Owens' or Downs' work, or those interested in medical histories of race and enslavement in the United States. It is a topic that remains important and unfortunately impactful in the modern day. I would especially recommend this book to my Dad.

[Lexi Ro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Slim book and a quick read. Willoughby successfully demonstrates the national and often international creation and cultivation of scientific racism which modern medical systems were built. While the book is expertly researched, parts felt repetitive, especially at the beginnings of each chapter. Further, Chapter 6 felt rather out if place and could have been entirely left out without deminishing the argument of the book.

Overall, it is a great resource for those interested in race and medicine.