Unruly Bodies, Holistic Healing: Balancing the Understanding of the Health and Well-being of the Enslaved at James Madison’s Montpelier

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Race, Racism, and Montpelier" , at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Medicine is rarely neutral or objective. This was especially true in the 19th century, as physicians worked to encode slavery in the very biology of Black enslaved people. The accounting logs of President Madison’s physician paint a one-sided picture of the health of the enslaved community at Montpelier. These logs argue that their bodies were unruly and needed to be monitored and controlled. To provide a more holistic picture of medical treatment and well-being practices, this study examines pharmaceutical and water tonic bottles, floral and faunal remains, and personal adornment items that speak to the day-to-day practices enslaved individuals employed to care for their own bodies. Overall, this perspective serves to draw important connections between past and present by challenging the idea that medicine was only practiced by white physicians and deconstructing the myth of the “unruliness” of the bodies of enslaved Black people that persists in medicalized racism today.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Race, Racism, and Montpelier   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2021

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology