American Doctors In The 1800s

In the beginnings of America, the people of our society always treated others based off of their race. In the early nineteenth century, there was still many plantations running and the medical field was just starting to expand and grow with its knowledge. While the doctors were less educated, they still were looked upon as high members of their society. During this time period there were many diseases affecting slaves and slave owners. The doctors would come in and try to give treatments to help the symptoms of these diseases. Some diseases were, “Epidemics of cholera, diphtheria, tuberculosis, and yellow fever, and concerns about sanitation and hygiene, led many city governments to create departments of health.” (Fillmore Randolph). Most of these diseases were more prominent based off of their location in the United States, but most professional doctors had to go from town to town, to try to cure the
sick.
While the doctors were giving treatments, their work area was not very sanitary and that caused a high risk of infection. Also, most of the doctors had no idea what they were doing because they had no formal education of medicine. In the 1800s most of the medicine practiced was based off of a logical guess then prayers to get better. Soon the sickness was only identified by its symptoms rather than the sickness itself. Most treatments went straight to bleeding, and sometimes the given medicine could lead to mercury poisoning, (Patients and Poisons). So, while the doctors would have trial and error from the people who could afford them, they rarely visited any slaves. Only the slave owners could try to reach out for a doctor and it was costly towards them because doctors were not cheap. From the fact that the doctors rarely visited slaves, the slaves in the early nineteenth century started practicing
their own medicine. While slaves were important because they gave their owners money, the slave owners did not want to spend money on their own slaves. The owners would pay little attention to their health, unless they were pregnant, and only focus on how they could perform their job. “For the slaves, ‘real’ health care more often than not was a result of folk healers, grandmother midwives, lay nurses, social networks such as churches, and, for pregnant slaves, female networks.” (McBride, David). The slaves had to look out for each other so one person would take up the roll as being the slave doctor. The owner would either come to them for medical advice, because they did not cost any money, or go to an actual doctor. Soon the slaves felt empowered by being able to help cure others, so they began to work towards other cures to more diseases. Thus, slave medicine was becoming advanced in how slaves could pick certain herbs based off of another slaves’ illness. While these slave doctors were great, the owners got nervous when they realized the slaves have easy access to poison from the herbs they collected. The slave doctors could choose certain herbs to abort pregnancies, or choose herbs that could sicken others and finally they could choose which could kill. After the owners realized that there were laws placed to only let slaves treat other slaves to reduce the probability of the slave trying to kill their owner, (Andreae, Christine). The slave doctors had a higher authority amongst other slaves and were looked up to for guidance and help. While the owners would get professional doctors to care for them, slaves grew as a society from them learning how to take care of themselves in an extraordinary way. In conclusion, people in that time period will always treat others by their skin, but african americans were becoming more important to our future, and the slave owners and members of their society, started to realize this..