Professor Stephen Kenny discusses his article, “A Dictate of Both Interest and Mercy”: Slave Hospitals in the Antebellum South.” Beginning on the shores of West Africa, White doctors began to systematize racialized medicine in the service of slavery. Establishing institutions of idealized models of slave care, the story of slave hospitals became a self-serving lie of enslaver benevolence and racial difference. Plantation hospitals were rooms or shacks, while urban spaces resembled prisons. The role of slavery is undeniably linked to the development of medical procedure and professionalism. Dr. J. Marion Sims, argues Prof. Kenny, serves as the perfect example of self-serving medical purpose of slavery.
Stephen C. Kenny, Senior Lecturer, 19th and 20th century North American History, University of Liverpool.
