Good Practices and Good Intentions Can Also Destroy: A Well-Respected Doctor & the Harm He Caused
Cartwright’s inventions are still used today but he also thought enslaving black people benefitted them.
Cartwright’s inventions are still used today but he also thought enslaving black people benefitted them.
Samuel Cartwright, the well-respected doctor that invented the spirometer, a device still in use today to measure lung capacity, argued that black people benefited from being enslaved. Cartwright saw himself as a friend of black people, and thought that their desire for freedom was harmful for them. He called this condition, “Drapetomania”. Cartwright appears to genuinely have thought this would help*.
Why is this important?
We think that exploring his life and beliefs is important precisely because he was well-respected and made relevant contributions to medicine and science, but also held horrid beliefs and advocated for slavery. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, well-respected and zealous men with good intentions have harmed many in the pursuit of improving society. From contemporary society’s vantage point, it is easy to demonize and brush away these individuals as evil or charlatans. However, at the time, they were influential and relevant in their respective fields.
For example, Dr. Walter Freeman, the man responsible for lobotomy’s popularity was, during his time, widely admired by his colleagues and cherished by many of his patients and their families. Nevertheless, he is commonly portrayed as a fame seeking quack. Likewise, Cartwright is often presented as a raging racist without any recognition of his status at the time.
We recognize that many of these individuals did make important contributions; however, these were coupled with undesirable harm. This harm was, at the time, unrecognized and sometimes even lauded. For that reason we should be cautious when embracing new solutions to social issues so that we can improve society while reducing unintended consequences.
Who was Samuel Cartwright?
Samuel Cartwright was born in the state of Virginia in 1793, son of a Calvinist reverend, who had a noticeable impact on his writings and beliefs. This affected his thinking about the world and the origin of man. He grew up to become a physician in the Confederate Army, at a time where Germ theory was non-existent, there were no anesthetics or antiseptics, and challenges between health practitioners was common practice. He lived at a time of great upheaval.
In the 1820’s the US admitted the new states of Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana, in which the majority of the expanding population was black. Moreover, black people had recently been emancipated. During a financial crisis in 1837, Cartwright lost most of his riches. In contrast, some of the former slaves in the state of Mississippi made a lot of money during this time (Myers, 2014). These drastic demographic and financial changes raised questions regarding social understanding of race.
Cartwright traveled to Europe to visit and study at some of the leading medical institutions in the world. During this time, he was able to perform several autopsies, which at the time were illegal in the United States. He also discussed ideas with his European colleagues. The research he conducted here made him think that there were biomedical differences between races and hence a medical justification for race-based slavery (Myers, 2014). He started to emphasize these differences in 1840. Later, in 1851, he published an article where he argued that enslaved people’s desire to be free was a mental illness.
Cartwright worked on a series of medical issues which earned him many accolades. In 1873 the Transactions of American Medical Association described Cartwright as an “eminent and leading physician” (Myers, 2014). He studied and catalogued the different stages of cholera and yellow fever which earned him awards from Harvard University (Myers, 2014). His use of statistics in the study of health was innovative and he was among the first to be able to draw inferences about groups of people. He used these skills to fight against inefficient medical practices and other types of quackery. Cartwright also invented the spirometer which he used in his study of racial differences.
Emerging Scientific Practices and Cartwright’s Science
It is easy to think that Cartwright’s conclusions were a product of a rotten methodology. This case, as many of those which we explore, demonstrates that good intentions, and good methods can also yield wrong conclusions. Cartwright’s methodology and approach to medicine were in line with best practices at the time and contributed to the advancement of medicine.
Cartwright was inspired by Francis Bacon’s approach to science and believed that observation trumped received wisdom (Myers, 2014). Bacon argued that good science was inductive in that it drew general conclusions from amassing evidence. Cartwright’s work is characterised by the investigation of the “smallest structures to reveal larger patterns or to make larger patterns come into appearance” (Myers, 2014). This call for observation and experimentation as the basis of explanation was new, innovative, and counter to the practice of medicine at the time (Myers, 2014). Many medical practitioners did not care for experimentation or evidence-based practices. Cartwright’s efforts were meant to add legitimacy and transparency to medicine.
Despite a reasonable methodology, he did support practices such as the “then popular practices of ‘blood-letting,’ ‘blistering’ and ‘cupping”) which modern medicine considers inefficient (Myers, 2014). Tragically, his prejudices about black people led him to justify their enslavement and abuse.
Conclusions
We think that the best way to create a more equitable and just world is to understand how injustice arises. In our view the best way to prevent further tragedies and injustices is to highlight the people and context who inflicted these on others.
In particular Cartwright’s story is important to understand the perpetuation of racism and thus prevent the abuse of science, medicine, and other fields to subjugate or discriminate against groups of people. We want to recognize his contributions but wholly condemn his contribution to the suffering of black people. We draw the following lessons from this case
First, individuals at the forefront can make significant contributions to their fields of study while also causing great harm. We should also consider whether mistakes are inevitable in the pursuit of progress. We urge caution.
Second, good intentions, and good methods are insufficient because pre-existing assumptions affect the questions people ask and how people interpret evidence. Therefore, engaging people with a variety of perspectives can highlight unrecognized biases and thus prevent harm.
Third, it is key to consider how policies will affect different groups of people before instituting them. We recognize that there are unknown unknowns but further efforts should be made.
Fourth, from our current society’s point of view, it is often easy to dismiss, demonize and judge the work and contributions of professionals in the past. However, in their respective times, many of them were respected, admired and lauded. We believe that caricaturization of these individuals invites us to draw the wrong lessons and hence disables us from preventing further harm.
Fifth, we should recognize that scientific and medical practices have harmed people.
Authors: Christian Orlic & Lucas Heili contributed equally to this article.
Racism and prejudice can result in great harm even if those perpetuating those ideas think they are doing “good”.
References
Crime Maters. 2023. Mental Illness Caused Slaves to Escape to Freedom, According to One Doctor. Medium Jan 3, 2023. https://medium.com/@criminalmatters/mental-illness-caused-slaves-to-escape-to-freedom-according-to-one-doctor-96ca77d1b376 Accessed March 20, 2023.
Quinones MIller. K.E. 2019. Runaway Slaves Suffered From a Mental Disease. Medium. November 16, 2019. https://medium.com/@authorkeqm/runaways-slaves-suffered-from-mental-disease-e1375f767fb1 Accessed March 20, 2023.
Myers, B.E. II. 2014. Drapetomania: Rebellion, Defiance, and Free Black Insanity in Antebellum United States. UCLA PhD Dissertation. https://escholarship.org/content/qt9dc055h5/qt9dc055h5_noSplash_1875a9a9f688f6f49c3222c6ecee4b42.pdf Accessed March 24, 2023.