Bibliograph

Sex, sickness, and slavery, illness in the antebellum South, Marli F. Weiner with Mazie Hough

Type

Label

Sex, sickness, and slavery, illness in the antebellum South, Marli F. Weiner with Mazie Hough

Language

eng

Bibliography note

Includes bibliographical references and index

resource.governmentPublication

government publication of a state province territory dependency etc

Index

index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

Sex, sickness, and slavery

Nature of contents

bibliography

Oclc number

759909880

Responsibility statement

Marli F. Weiner with Mazie Hough

Sub title

illness in the antebellum South

Summary

This study of medical treatment in the antebellum South argues that Southern physicians' scientific training and practice uniquely entitled them to formulate medical justification for the imbalanced racial hierarchies of the period. Challenged with both helping to preserve the slave system (by acknowledging and preserving clear distinctions of race and sex) and enhancing their own authority (with correct medical diagnoses and effective treatment), doctors sought to understand bodies that did not necessarily fit into neat dichotomies or agree with suggested treatments. Expertly drawing the dynamic tensions during this period in which Southern culture and the demands of slavery often trumped science, Weiner explores how doctors struggled with contradictions as medicine became a key arena for debate over the meanings of male and female, sick and well, black and white, North and South

Table Of Contents

Introduction: The Political Body -- Constructing Race -- Constructing Sex -- Placed Bodies -- Ambiguous Bodies -- The Examined Body -- The Unexamined Body -- The Diseased Body -- Conclusion: The Body Politic

Classification