Working Cures: Healing, Health, and Power on Southern Slave Plantations

by Sharla Fett

Exploring the charged topic of black health under slavery, Sharla Fett reveals how herbalism, conjuring, midwifery, and other African American healing practices became arts of resistance in the antebellum South. Fett shows how enslaved men and women drew on African precedents to develop a view of health and healing that was distinctly at odds with slaveholders' property concerns. While white slaveowners narrowly defined slave health in terms of "soundness" for labor, slaves embraced a relational view of health that was intimately tied to religion and community. African American healing practices thus not only restored the body but also provided a formidable weapon against white objectification of black health.

Enslaved women played a particularly important role in plantation health culture: they made medicines, cared for the sick, and served as midwives in both black and white households. Their labor as health workers not only proved essential to plantation production but also gave them a basis of authority within enslaved communities. Not surprisingly, conflicts frequently arose between slave doctoring women and the whites who attempted to supervise their work, as did conflicts related to feigned illness, poisoning threats, and African-based religious practices. By examining the deeply contentious dynamics of plantation healing, Fett sheds new light on the broader power relations of antebellum American slavery.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Race, Academic, American History

304 pages, Hardcover

First published November 9, 2000

Reviews

[Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe not the most readable history I've ever picked up, but a truly amazing act of historical analysis. Fett makes visible the interconnected medical lives of slaves and slave-owners in a complex, intriguing way. A fascinating double-feature with The Immortal Life of Henriette Lacks.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wasn't super excited about reading this book for my Race and Religion class (just not that interested in the topic of health and medicine), but this was a pleasant surprise. Well written and very thorough, Working Cures explores all aspects of health and medicine among enslaved Black people – going beyond the obvious racial dynamics to analyze gender and class, as well.

[Sigrid A · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sharla Fett's study of healing practices and racialized power dynamics on southern slave plantations (or forced labor camps as we've come to think of them) is highly readable, deeply researched, and highly illuminating. I learned so much from this book about the practices and ideas about healing among enslaved communities, and Fett does an excellent job of dispelling the myth of the benevolent white woman dispensing medical care to her superstitious and ignorant "property." Instead, as Fett shows, there was much more cross pollination of medical knowledge (including herbs), as well as dependence on enslaved women for knowledge and to do the actual labor of nursing while the plantation owners decided who got which medicines (and often used medicines - largely emetics and laxatives - as punishment). And much more - the chapter on conjuring alone is worth the read.

[abby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Had to read this for my Health & Healing in Religion course in college.

At first I reluctantly started the book since it was required for a class, but soon I became fully invested in the information it was spreading light on— Black enslaved doctoring women were the backbone of slave communities. They were seen as elders and critical figures amongst both Blacks and slaveholding whites. Slaveowners themselves at times even trusted their own enslaved doctoring women as opposed to an institutionally educated white doctor. Because these enslaved women worked fields for a living, they naturally became more educated on the local herbs, both the medically beneficial and deadly poisonous, than their white counterparts.

This book blew my mind. Gender in relation to antebellum plantations in the South is a very interesting topic indeed.

[Bailey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not the easiest read and a bit repetitive but extremely insightful. Fett very obviously put a lot of thought and time into this book, reading letters and journals and pulling direct quotes from people who were nearly lost to time. She shows medicinal practices from both perspectives, explaining how the enslaved Africans viewed holistic healing and the relationship between spirituality, the earth, and science, as well as the white enslavers confusion over this despite their lack of knowledge of all three. I was hoping for more insight into herbal remedies, which she delivered on in the first quarter of the book but then it dwindles, but i also understand that a lot of this was met with secrecy, stolen, or lost.

[Maia Boswell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Research project

[Sean Mccarrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This work is a seminal monograph that covers the dichotomy of healing during the slave era in the Southern United States. While I think this is a great book, I don't feel like this initial arguments it starts out with are analyzed the whole way through. Otherwise, it is a great work.

[Liz Parker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really great overview of medicine during the antebellum era on slave plantations--especially looking at what slaves had to endure and how they did it. Good overview on both the herbalism and conjuring (hoodoo/rootwork) side of things.