How White Doctors Turned Black Slaves Into Medical Test Subjects

The bodies of dead slaves were also used to teach ‘aspiring’ doctors in medical schools.

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain)

Unit 731, a Japanese unit during World War II is infamous for its horrific medical experiments on prisoners such as the ‘frostbite testing,’ or vivisection of prisoners. Similarly, the Nazi regime subjected chosen inmates of its infamous concentration camps to unspeakable torture in the name of medical progress, removing section of bone, muscle and nerves to transplant to other victims.

Looking back to the era of chattel slavery in the US, a time of extreme inequality, reveals that enslaved people also suffered similar forms of medical abuse. Slaves were the valuable property of powerful plantation owners, extremely useful to the running of their everyday operations. However, slave owners did agree to sell their slaves to ambitious white doctors for the random curiosities of the physicians and to get sick slaves back on their feet as soon as possible.

Slave bodies were used to teach aspiring doctors

There was a strong network of private ‘Negro infirmaries’ that admitted slave patients so they could be healed of whatever ailment they suffered from as soon as possible, so they could…