Medicine, Reproduction, and Women’s Health at the Orange Valley Plantation, Jamaica

This article explores the role of hospitals constructed for enslaved people in pre-emancipation Jamaica as inherently conflicted spaces, where health care was provided to the sick and injured while, at the same time, the horrific system of human bondage was reproduced. Hospitals for the enslaved were sites of conflict in terms of their vision, their practices, and the materia medica they employed. We explore these practices and argue that the result was a therapeutic regime and a blended health care experience, provided by free and enslaved health care providers. They employed European, Indigenous, and Afro-Caribbean medicines, which provided a measure of medical assistance, while also serving to increase the enslaved population, and assuage the guilt of white plantation owners. Disturbing as these historical conclusions are, profound health care inequities persist today and disproportionately affect the reproductive health of women of African descent in the Americas.