Sex, Sickness, and Slavery: Illness in the Antebellum South

Sex, Sickness, and Slavery: Illness in the Antebellum South
ISBN-10
0252036999
ISBN-13
9780252036996
Category
History
Pages
290
Language
English
Published
2012-06-21
Publisher
University of Illinois Press
Authors
Marli F. Weiner, Mayzie Hough

Description

This study of medical treatment in the antebellum South argues that Southern physicians' scientific training and practice uniquely entitled them to formulate medical justification for the imbalanced racial hierarchies of the period. Challenged with both helping to preserve the slave system (by acknowledging and preserving clear distinctions of race and sex) and enhancing their own authority (with correct medical diagnoses and effective treatment), doctors sought to understand bodies that did not necessarily fit into neat dichotomies or agree with suggested treatments. Expertly drawing the dynamic tensions during this period in which Southern culture and the demands of slavery often trumped science, Weiner explores how doctors struggled with contradictions as medicine became a key arena for debate over the meanings of male and female, sick and well, black and white, North and South.

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