Drapetomania
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Drapetomania was a proposed mental illness that, in 1851, American physician Samuel A. Cartwright hypothesized as the cause of enslaved Americans fleeing captivity. This hypothesis was based on the be
Engraving of an escaped slave, published in 1837
Dysaesthesia aethiopica
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In psychiatry, dysaesthesia aethiopica was an alleged mental illness described by American physician Samuel A. Cartwright in 1851, which proposed a theory for the cause of laziness among slaves. Today
Drapetomania
…constituted "an extreme within the range of 'scientific argument'" that was not typical and may have been unsupported by "many intelligent Southerners." Dysaesthesia aethiopica, another novel diagnosis of Cartwright regarding what was seen as a mental illness that was the cause of laziness among slaves. The Protest Psychosis…
Lesions on the back of an enslaved African from Mississippi