The Use of Blacks for Medical Experimentation and Demonstration in the Old South

nals reveals that slaves had a fairly significant role in medical education and in experimental and radical medical and surgical practice of the antebellum South, remarked J. Walter Fisher in a 1968 article describing some of the medical uses to which slaves were put in the Old South.' Further investigation into this subject indicates that southern white medical educators and researchers relied greatly on the availability of Negro patients for various purposes. Black bodies often found their way to dissecting tables, operating amphitheaters, classroom or bedside demonstrations, and experimental facilities. This is not to deny that white bodies were similarly used.2 In northern cities and in southern port towns such as New Orleans, Louisville, Memphis, Charleston, and Mobile, where poor, transient whites were abundant, seamen, European immigrants, and white indigents undoubtedly joined blacks in fulfilling