151_Pr00f
All Star
Full article http://theconversation.com/how-blac...as-specimens-to-ambitious-white-doctors-43074
Some excerpts
....http://www.rawstory.com/2015/06/11/
"When an elite white enslaver-physician, Charlestonian Elias S. Bennett, published notes recalling the case of a truly extraordinary tumour afflicting a young female slave on the family’s James Island plantation, his narrative revealed much about the opportunities for human subject research under American slavery.
Bennett recalled an unnamed female patient-subject who had developed “a small tumour the size of a ten cent piece” behind her right ear when she was just four weeks old. In 1817, when Bennett was training to become a doctor and “anxious to perform an operation”, he, together with a fellow physician-apprentice, made a disastrously crude surgical attempt to explore and remove this growth.
In an era prior to anaesthesia and asepsis, this type of surgical intervention was extremely dangerous – especially when undertaken by two unsupervised medical apprentices – who took liberty of an opportunity presented by an extremely vulnerable enslaved child. As Bennett remembered, the child suffered a great deal of “inflammation” as a result, and only “by very close attention” did she recover “in six to eight weeks” – the plantation/labour camp’s seclusion providing perfect cover for what would prove to be a major medical blunder......."
Some excerpts
....http://www.rawstory.com/2015/06/11/
"When an elite white enslaver-physician, Charlestonian Elias S. Bennett, published notes recalling the case of a truly extraordinary tumour afflicting a young female slave on the family’s James Island plantation, his narrative revealed much about the opportunities for human subject research under American slavery.
Bennett recalled an unnamed female patient-subject who had developed “a small tumour the size of a ten cent piece” behind her right ear when she was just four weeks old. In 1817, when Bennett was training to become a doctor and “anxious to perform an operation”, he, together with a fellow physician-apprentice, made a disastrously crude surgical attempt to explore and remove this growth.
In an era prior to anaesthesia and asepsis, this type of surgical intervention was extremely dangerous – especially when undertaken by two unsupervised medical apprentices – who took liberty of an opportunity presented by an extremely vulnerable enslaved child. As Bennett remembered, the child suffered a great deal of “inflammation” as a result, and only “by very close attention” did she recover “in six to eight weeks” – the plantation/labour camp’s seclusion providing perfect cover for what would prove to be a major medical blunder......."
