Description
Book SynopsisShows how white Southern doctors used science to defend slavery
Trade Review"A powerful case for the importance of medical men and ideas in undergirding slavery and white supremacy."--
Southern Spaces "Weiner provides an ambitious and well-researched study of the relationship between the antebellum social order and medical discourse on race, gender, and illness in the South."--
The Journal of Southern History"With a thorough analysis of a breadth of evidence, the authors effectively prove their thesis and raise many other striking points along the way… Especially valuable is their analysis of how African American slaves understood health and illness and how their views differed from those of white physicians."--
Florida Historical Quarterly "Weiner and Hough excel at incorporating source material from collected African American folklore, medical journal articles, diary entries, and medical guidebooks into their narrative. An accessible and clear account of the unequivocal ties between the ascendancy of medical professionalism and authority by highlighting the experiences of traditionally marginalized bodies within the politically turbulent southern context."--The Journal of American History
"This book is a valuable addition to existing scholarship on science, race, and sex. . . .Highly recommended."--
Choice "A masterful guide to the particularities of southern medicine on the eve of the Civil War. Historians of the South, medicine, gender, and race will welcome it."--
Ohio Valley History"A unique look at the role of the medical institution in fulfilling the antebellum Southern requirement of unquestionable categorization of bodies to continue a way of life.
Sex, Sickness, and Slavery shows that the importance of one institution in maintaining a status quo cannot be taken for granted."--
Southern Historian "In this beautifully written book, Weiner details how physicians wrote and thought about the illnesses of slaves and women.
Sex, Sickness, and Slavery joines a distinguished body of scholarship that shows how intellectual power in the South was mobilized in support of slavery."--
The Historian
