Slavery is fundamentally an economic phenomenon. Average prices of slaves rose dramatically in the 1820’s. Throughout history, slavery has existed where it has been economically worthwhile to those in power. The health of a planter’s work force was critical to economic success. Health and healing practices form a core part of life experiences, especially in circumstances such as the southern plantation, where life was particularly nasty, brutal and short for its laboring inhabitants. Slave workers prove the essential to plantation production and gave a basis of authority within enslaved communities. Not surprisingly, conflicts frequently arose between slave doctoring women and the whites who attempted to supervise their work, poisoning threats, African-based religious practices, and plagues intensified in the midst of it all. This gave slave healers a problematic role in balancing their need to aid their masters and their fellow slaves.
Crowded living conditions, a relatively poor diet, and physical abuse by owners meant that slaves constantly faced health risks. As expected, slaves turned to slave healers for physical as well as emotional comfort. Ironically whites also found use in their slave healers in the making of their own knowledge and remedies. Nonetheless, the degree to which a slave healer benefited the white community, is difficult to establish. Whites trusted African Americans to treat them in times of sickness, the imbalanced nature of the relationship of the enslaved healers to their owners and other free patients was complex and fostered tension as well.
If healing skills were an advantage to both slave and owner, they also posed great threat. A slave healer was held accountable and accused of purposely killing their patients through the use of poisons, which was usually the case. Slaves who knew their plants had easy access to poison. They knew which “herbs could abort pregnancies, which could sicken, which could cause sudden death” . In the years between 1780 and 1864, the state of Virginia documented that “58 slaves were convicted of poisoning or attempted poisoning.” This spread fear which later prompted for the enactment of laws. If slaves had not typically prepared and administered medicine, the fear of poisoning would not have been an issue and legislation would not have been considered necessary. Although some slaves were also accused of poisoning under the guise of preparing or serving food, that is a separate matter.
In most cases slaves, were guilty of the charge of poisoning and others where they were innocent. The issue of guilt is highly problematic because slaves did not receive what we would consider fair trials. Proving a case of poisoning was difficult.
There were many accounts of the poisoning trials that did occur and are preserved in the historical records. In Pittsylvania Country, January 1806, two slaves named Tom and Amy were charged with and tried for preparing and exhibiting medicine. They were alleged to have used poison to kill two of Amy’s owners’ children. Pompey, a slave, witnessed a conversation between Tom and Amy during which, Pompey testified, Amy said she had killed two children with the “truck” given to her by Tom. A doctor by the name of James testified that the young kids had died “with the croup and not of poison”. It’s not hard to see why the parents anticipated that their kids were just suffering through a seasonal illness, croup is a common respiratory problem in young children, characterized by episodes of cough and difficulty breathing. In the contrary, both Amy and Tom were found guilty and sentenced to be hanged. “Tom may have already had a reputation as a conjurer, which may explain why, in spite of the absence of proof that actual poison was involved, the court did not recommend that he receive mercy.”
The legislative branch, composed of the House of Representatives and the Senate, is in charge of making laws. In many states the legislative branch, attempted to control the practice of medicine by slaves and free blacks through a series of laws. These laws reflected on how white people saw the necessity and reliance on slave healers, as both a benefit and a hazard. Various modifications to this law indicate the extent to which African Americans were firmly established in the southern medical care system. In 1792 the law was amended to allow slaves who administered medicine, as long as they did so with good intentions, to be acquitted if the drugs they prescribed were not harmful to the patient. In 1843 another exception was made that allowed a slave to sell, prepare or administer medicine under the direction of their master. The punishment was reduced to stripes rather than death. The law also addressed slave knowledge specifically. It stated that “If any free Negro shall cause to be administered any drug or substance causing abortion, he shall be confined five to ten years; if a slave, he shall receive thirty-nine lashes.” It is interesting that the punishment for a first offense committed by a free black was harsher than for a first offense committed by a slave. It is likely that this was to ensure a greater degree of control over free blacks. In not locking up slaves for their first offense, the court avoided taking away the slave-owner’s valuable property and, no doubt, expected that the owner would prevent the slave from either practicing medicine or from being caught a second time. Slaveholders found the knowledge and abilities of slave healers to be of much valuable to eliminate them entirely from the plantation community.
One could argue that not only not only was it impossible, but that the majority of slaveholders did not want a ban on slave healers because they valued the medical knowledge and skills, not to mention labor, of slaves too much. Medical knowledge in the hands of African Americans continued to be accepted, as long as it was controlled. Suggesting that slaveholders didn’t want to get rid of their slave healers for multiple reasons, such as their value to the medical knowledge and skills, labor, and most importantly economic benefits. The healers didn’t get paid or rewarded for what they did. By far, their masters benefited the most from the slave healers. Opportunities for contact and exchange occurred, and the resulting medical advances of this exchange helped bring even more slaves.
Many slave-owners were like James Henry Hammond, who had no use for slave medical practices or healers. When Hammond discovered that a separate system of health existed on his property, he recorded that he “traced out the negro Doctors ... who have been giving out medicine for years and have killed I think most of those that have died. Punished them and also their patients very severely.” Slave-owners with opinions similar to that of Hammond’s gave slaves little credit for the ability to take care of their own health. “Negroes are a thriftless, thoughtless people, and have to be restricted in many points essential to their constitutions and health. Left to themselves they will over eat, unseasonably eat, walk half the night, sleep on the ground, out of doors, anywhere.” Although he condemned slave practices, Hammond was among the nineteenth-century Southerners who exercised his option to choose from among the other alternative practices available. Turning away from heroic treatments because according to his observations they often caused more harm to the patient than anything else, Hammond in the 1830’s adopted botanic practices. Ironically, these botanical treatments were similar to the slave practices he denounced which were also largely botanical in nature. The medical knowledge of slaves was both acknowledged, although on a limited scale, and utilized by whites during the early nineteenth-century. Unlike the science-based medicine of today, 18th century medicine had a religious influence black and white healers adopted. Enslaved Africans carried with them from Africa both a spiritual component of healing and the everyday knowledge of specific plants and cures. African-born slave healers, were also known as “root doctors” because of their extensive use of native plants to heal. Because they were widely believed to use traditional African healing methods described as casting “spells,” conjurer was another title used for them. Conjurers is a word derived from the Middle English “conjuren” developed from the Old French “conjurer,” meaning to use a spell. The position of conjurer was one of particular significance to the slave community. It was also one to which a great deal of status was attached. According to John Blassingame, only the slave preacher enjoyed as much status among other slaves, as did the conjurer. Slaves revered conjurers and preachers because they performed services for other slaves. Conjurers made such powerful impressions on the slave community that many of them bowed in their presence to show respect.