Dissection, media portrayals, and reaction: Black bodies and medical education in nineteenth-century newspapers

Abstract

Throughout the nineteenth century, medical schools in both the Northern and Southern regions of the United States required a regular supply of bodies for medical study and experimentation. Physicians and medical students targeted the bodies of African Americans, both freedmen and the enslaved, to meet this demand. Simultaneously, the nation's booming newspaper market became a stage on which debates about the cruelty of slavery and the social consequences of pursuing medical knowledge played out in articles about the dissection of Black bodies. Such stories increased fears about dissection and mistrust towards the medical profession among African American communities, which manifested in riots against physicians, vandalism against medical schools, and corrective responses from African American newspaper editors and journalists. Through an extensive examination of nineteenth-century U.S. newspapers, this article identifies themes evident in the coverage of dissection during this period. Southern newspapers crafted stories of dissection that served the dual purpose of entertaining White readers and humiliating African Americans. This public humiliation fostered what became a popular genre of derogatory and vile humor that reinforced negative and inaccurate racialized stereotypes as well as racist science. Ultimately, such newspaper coverage provoked reactions within Black communities and among antislavery advocates that showcase how people often excluded from practicing medicine themselves viewed issues like medical education. Newspaper rhetoric around these themes amplified tensions between religious and scientific perspectives, reflected differences and similarities between the northern and southern areas of the United States, and fortified racist views in both cultural and scientific contexts.