Mental Illness In America

During the Antebellum period in the southern regions of the United States, medical knowledge was primitive. Physicians used methods of healing backed up by little to no scientific research or evidence of true effectiveness. Among these were bleeding and purging, techniques of severing a patient’s skin in order to let the disease escape the body (Fitzgerald 47). Many African Americans had already been diagnosed with a variety of blood disorders, including hemophilia, thus giving them better knowledge of necessary treatments (Ray 3). Slaves coming to the New World from Africa had used herbal remedies in their home countries, which were proven as time went on, to be significantly more effective than the treatments American doctors used. Burdock root, for example, could be used for antibacterial, antifungal, and anti-inflammatory purposes, while Asafetida helped prevent pulmonary illnesses.
An example of one of these diseases is malaria. African Americans working on rice plantations in the Low Countries of the south has better chances of contracting waterborne illnesses similar to malaria (Ray 3). This was the same for slaves in swampy regions of the country. Although it was common for African American workers to contract diseases once they arrived in the New World, many of them already had serious blood disorders like anemia and hemophilia. This factored into the higher mortality rates that the first generation of slaves typical had. This may have been a result of the African American remedies that proved to be more beneficial than white medical practices (Fitzgerald