Oxford Reference Search Results

drapetomania n.   Quick reference

A Dictionary of Psychology (4 ed.)

... n. A form of mania ( 2 ) supposedly affecting slaves in the 19th century, manifested by an uncontrollable impulse to wander or run away from their white masters, preventable by regular whipping. The disorder was first identified in a medical report that is often cited as a fanciful case of psychologism . Compare dysaesthesia aethiopis . [Coined by the US physician Samuel Adolphus Cartwright ( 1793–1863 ) in the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal in 1851 , from Greek drapeteusis an escape + mania ...

psychologism n.   Quick reference

A Dictionary of Psychology (4 ed.)

... n . An exaggeration of the importance or significance of psychology; a belief that psychology is the basis of philosophy or of all natural and social sciences; any unjustified or fanciful psychological explanation for a non-psychological phenomenon, such as drapetomania or dysaesthesia ...

dysaesthesia aethiopis n.   Quick reference

A Dictionary of Psychology (4 ed.)

...and endemic among them in North America in the mid nineteenth century, manifested by laziness and insensibility to pain when whipped. The article in which it was first reported is often cited as a fanciful example of psychologism . US dysesthesia aethiopis . Compare drapetomania . [Coined by the US physician Samuel Adolphus Cartwright ( 1793–1863 ) in the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal in 1851 , from Aethiop an archaic word for a black...

mania n.   Quick reference

A Dictionary of Psychology (4 ed.)

... n. 1. A mood disorder characterized by manic episodes . See also antimanic , hypermania , hypomanic episode , inositol . 2. An obsessional preoccupation with a particular idea or activity. See also dancing mania , dipsomania , drapetomania , egomania , erotomania , graphomania , kleptomania , megalomania , monomania , monopede mania , necromania , nymphomania , pornographomania , pyromania , rhinotillexomania , thanatomania , trichotillomania . maniac n. A person with a mania (1). See also love . manic adj. Of or...

Ethnology   Reference library

Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619–1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass

...patients, wrote frequently of the “diseases and peculiarities of the negro race,” in southern agricultural and business journals, with his advice to slaveholders appearing frequently in DeBow's Review . In an 1851 article he described several “negro” diseases, including drapetomania, which caused slaves to run away. The cure for this ailment, according to Cartwright, included providing adequate clothing, food, and shelter and allowing nuclear families to live together. He advised slaveholders that slaves “have only to be kept in that state and treated...

Health and Medicine   Reference library

Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619–1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass

...to maintain ownership. The bodies of slaves who died were dissected by physicians for research purposes. Disease and Racism Several diseases were thought to be exclusive to slaves and were used as evidence of racial inferiority, including struma africana, cachexia africana, drapetomania, and dysesthesia aethiopica. Struma africana, also called Negro consumption or Negro poison, was considered a disease distinct from the pulmonary disorders of whites. A person suffering from struma africana was said to have ashy skin, a fast pulse, and a sulky disposition....

Proslavery Thought   Reference library

Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619–1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass

...made blacks more suited to slavery than members of other races. Cartwright also believed that blacks suffered from diseases that whites could not catch. He identified “Dysaethesia aethiopica” as an illness that caused slaves to misbehave, as if by compulsion. Another disease, “Drapetomania,” affected the minds of slaves, “causing negroes to run away.” Nott was equally certain of the justice of slavery, though he rejected Cartwright's acceptance of blacks as merely an inferior group within the human family. Nott concluded that blacks were actually a species...

Race, Theories of   Reference library

Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619–1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass

...anatomy was different and “rendered the people of Africa unable to take care of themselves.” It also led Africans to “indolence and apathy” and “debasement of [the] mind.” He noted that blacks were prone to diseases that whites never caught, the most interesting of which was “drapetomania, or the disease causing slaves to run away.” Although the pseudoscience of Cartwright and his predecessors provided intellectual support for slavery, the end of slavery did not stop investigations of racial hierarchies. In 1866 Josiah C. Nott, a physician from Mobile,...

Scientific Racism and North American Psychology   Reference library

Andrew S. Winston

The Oxford Encyclopedia of the History of Modern Psychology

...needed no evidence for the inferiority of Africans; the conclusion seemed as self-evident as it was to zoologist Louis Agassiz when he reported his revulsion upon encountering Black Americans in 1846 ( Gould, 1981 ). Although scientific and pseudoscientific ideas such as “drapetomania” (the pathological urge of slaves to escape the “protection” of the owner) were employed in the justification of slavery, it was often the case that scientists might oppose slavery but maintain a rigid racial hierarchy or support “repatriation” of Black Americans to Africa (...