Slave Health in the Antebellum South (2011)
Undergraduate: Sarah Thead
Faculty Advisor: Heather Williams
Department: History
In the Antebellum Upper South, enslaved people received health-related care from two sources. The first, and more common, was from another slave at the same plantation who may have been elderly or designated as a nurse. The second form of healthcare was from white doctors who were brought in by the slaveholder. This slaveholder behavior, seemingly strange considering the overall treatment of the enslaved people of the Upper South, can be explained by financial motivation, which is a common argument among contemporary historians for other aspects of slaveholders’ actions. For any slaveholder, purchasing a slave was an investment, and that person’s life and health became extremely valuable to them as a result. The value of enslaved people and their health to their owners is evident in the way that both slaveholders and enslaved people spoke about healthcare.