Ebony and Ivy

by Craig Steven Wilder

  31. George B. Wood, Early History of the University of Pennsylvania: From Its Origin to the Year 1827, 3rd ed. (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1896), 222–30; Samuel Bard, Edinburgh, to Dr. John Bard, New York City, 29 December 1762, Bard Collection, Malloch Rare Book Room New York Academy of Medicine; William D. Carrell, “Biographical List of American College Professors to 1800,” History of Education Quarterly, Autumn 1968, 359; John Shrady, The College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, and Its Founders, Officers, Instructors, Benefactors and Alumni: A History (New York: Lewis, 1903), 18–19; Samuel Bard, A Discourse upon the Duties of a Physician, With Some Sentiments on the Usefulness and Necessity of a Public Hospital: Delivered before the President and Governors of King’s College, at the Commencement Held on the 15th of May, 1769. As Advice to Those Gentlemen Who then Received the First Medical Degrees Conferred by That University (New York: A. and J. Robertson, 1769); Helffenstein, Pierre Fauconnier and His Descendants, 88–89.

  Students trained at Edinburgh also established the first medical program in Canada. In 1819 Andrew Holmes and John Stephenson graduated from Edinburgh and returned to Montreal after visiting London and Paris. Four years later, they became founding faculty of the new Montreal Medical Institute, an adjunct teaching facility for the Montreal General Hospital; in fact, four of the six original instructors were trained at Edinburgh. In 1828 the Medical Institute reorganized as the medical department of McGill College (1821), which the wealthy merchant James McGill had endowed with a £10,000 bequest and a campus at the base of Mont Royal. Francis J. Shepherd, “The First Medical School in Canada: Its History and Founders, with Some Personal Reminiscences,” Canadian Medical Association Journal, April 1925, 418–22.

  32. William Nisbet, The Edinburgh School of Medicine; Containing the Preliminary of Fundamental Branches of Professional Education, viz. Anatomy, Medical Chemistry, and Botany. Intended as an Introduction to the Clinical Guide. The Whole Forming a Complete System of Medical Education and Practice According to the Arrangement of the Edinburgh School (London: A. Strahan, 1802), I:11, 137–38.

  33. Josiah Quincy, Memoir of the Life of Josiah Quincy Jun. of Massachusetts, by His Son, Josiah Quincy (Boston: Cummings, Hilliard, 1825), 132–34.

  34. There were no enslaved people recorded for the twenty-year period beginning 1810. New Hampshire had about a thousand free black people by the end of that era. Ralph Nading Hill, The College on the Hill: A Dartmouth Chronicle (Hanover, NH: Dartmouth Publications, 1964), 102–3; draft chapters with written notes, Samuel Sterns Morse Papers, 1964–1976, Box 1, Rauner Library, Dartmouth College (also see the Ralph Nading Hill Papers, Box 1); Dick Hoefnagel and Virginia L. Close, Eleazar Wheelock and the Adventurous Founding of Dartmouth College (Hanover, NH: Durand, 2002), 95; M. E. Goddard and Henry V. Partridge, A History of Norwich, Vermont (Hanover, NH: Dartmouth Press, 1905), 219–21; Emily A. Smith, The Life and Letters of Nathan Smith, M.B., M.D. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1914), 51–52, 99; General Catalogue of Dartmouth College and the Associated Schools, 1769–1900, 62; Dr. Charles Knowlton’s unfinished autobiography was published in two parts under the title “The Late Charles Knowlton, M.D.,” Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, 10 September 1851 and 24 September 1851, 109–120 and 149–57; The Seventh Census of the United States: 1850 (Washington, DC: Robert Armstrong, 1853), 22; Dartmouth Cemetery Association, “Record of Deaths, Interment and Inscriptions” (copied March 1929).

  35. Alexander Grant, The Story of the University of Edinburgh During Its First Three Hundred Years (London: Longmans, Green, 1884), I:298–304; James Coutts, A History of the University of Glasgow: From Its Foundation in 1451 to 1909 (Glasgow: J. Maclehose and Sons, 1909), 517–19; A. W. Bates, The Anatomy of Robert Knox: Murder, Mad Science and Medical Regulation in Nineteenth-Century Edinburgh (Eastbourne, UK: Sussex Academic Press, 2010); Tim Marshall, Murdering to Dissect: Grave-robbing, Frankenstein and the Anatomy Literature (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995).

  36. By 1796 the municipal government and private brokers were seeking to seize the African cemetery to accommodate the expanding white population. The city offered a new burial ground, vacated black people’s claims to the property, and resorted to coercion. However, the black community’s desire to protect their deceased also seems to have played a role in shaping the agreement that was finalized in 1800. The new burial ground was in Potter’s Field. Minutes of the Common Council of the City of New York, 1784–1831 (New York: By the City of New York, 1917), II:221, 264, 626, IV:522–25; T. Maerfchalckm, “A Plan of the City of New York, Reduced from an Actual Survey” (1763; New York: Valentine’s Manual, 1850); Sappol, Traffic of Dead Bodies, 44–45, 106–7; Jaspar Dankers and Peter Sluyter, Journal of a Voyage to New York and a Tour in Several of the American Colonies in 1679–80, trans. and ed. Henry C. Murphy (Brooklyn: Long Island Historical Society, 1867), 136–37. On the social meaning and function of funerary ritual in black New York, see Leslie M. Alexander, African or American? Black Identity and Political Activism in New York City, 1784–1861 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008).

  37. Providence Gazette, 24 April 1773.

  38. John Watts to the Honorable General Robert Monckton, 16 May 1764, The Letter Book of John Watts: Merchant and Councillor of New York, January 1, 1762–December 22, 1765, vol. LXI of The Collections of the New-York Historical Society for the Year 1928 (New York: Printed for the Society, 1928), 254–56; Jared Sparks, ed., The Writings of George Washington: Being His Correspondence, Addresses, Messages, and Other Papers, Official and Private, Selected and Published from the Original Manuscripts (Boston: Ferdinand Andrews, 1839), I:559.

  39. Maria Farmer, last will and testament, 18 March 1788, “Abstracts of Wills on File in the Surrogates Office, City of New York, Volume XIV, June 12, 1786–February 13, 1796. With Letters of Administration, January 5, 1786–December 31, 1795,” Collections of the New-York Historical Society for the Year 1905 (New York: Printed for the Society, 1906), 136–38; Charles Farmar Billopp, comp., A History of Thomas and Anne Billopp Farmar and Some of Their Descendants in America (New York: Grafton, 1907), 46–49.

  40. Edward Warren, The Life of John Warren, M.D., Surgeon-General During the War of the Revolution; First Professor of Anatomy and Surgery in Harvard College; President of the Massachusetts Medical Society, Etc. (Boston: Noyes, Holmes, 1874), 11–12, 227–29; Edward Mussey Hartwell, The Study of Anatomy, Historically and Legally Considered: A Paper Read at the Meeting of the American Social Science Association, September 9, 1880 (Boston: Tolman and White, 1881), 17–19; Moore, “Two Hundred Years Ago,” 527–29; Henry Bronson, “Medical History and Biography,” Papers of the New Haven Colony Historical Society (New Haven: For the Society, 1877), II:239–55.

  41. The Rutgers Medical College (1792–93; 1812–16; 1826–30) enjoyed remarkable periods of success that were interrupted by attacks from Columbia College and Physicians and Surgeons. Maryland Journal, 26 October 1787; Sappol, Traffic of Dead Bodies, 109–10; see the 1826 advertisement in David L. Cowen, Medical Education: The Queen’s-Rutgers Experience, 1792–1830 (New Brunswick: Rutgers Medical School, 1966); Steven Robert Wilf, “Anatomy and Punishment in Late Eighteenth-Century New York,” Journal of Social History, Spring 1989, 510–16; minutes for 16 December 1793, in Columbia College Faculty of Medicine, Minutes 1792–1813, Health Sciences Library, Archives and Special Collections, Columbia University.

  42. Sappol, Traffic of Dead Bodies, 44–45, 48–49, 106–7; New York Journal and Daily Patriotic Register, 19 April 1788.

  43. New-York Morning Post, 15 October 1787; Catalogue of the Governors, Trustees, and Officers, and of the Alumni and Other Graduates, of Columbia College (Originally King’s College), in the City of New York, from 1754 to 1882 (New York: Printed for the College, 1882), 11–12.

  44. New-York Packet, 25 April 1788; American Herald, 1 May 1788; Pennsylvania Packet, and Daily Advertiser, 18 April 1788; Independent Gazetteer, 18 April 1788; Pennsylvania Mercury and Universal Advertiser,
19 April 1788; Paul A. Gilje, The Road to Mobocracy: Popular Disorder in New York City, 1763–1834 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987), 78–83; Sappol, Traffic of Dead Bodies, 107–9; Wilf, “Anatomy and Punishment in Late Eighteenth-Century New York,” 508–13; Edward Robb Ellis, The Epic of New York City (New York: Coward-McCann, 1966), 181–83; Minutes of the Common Council of the City of New York, 1784–1831, I:363, 393, 623.

  45. American Herald, 1 May 1788; New York Journal and Daily Patriotic Register, 19 April 1788; Joel Tyler Headley, The Great Riots of New York, 1712–1873 (New York: E. B. Treat, 1873), 57.

  46. President John Wheelock to the Hon. Benjamin J. Gilbert, 18 December 1809 (#809668), Resolutions made at a meeting of the President and other officers of Dartmouth College, 18 December 1809 (#809668.1), Henry Fish, William Tully, John R. Martin, Daniel Lyman, and Ira Bascom (Committee for the Class) to the Honorable President and Professors of Dartmouth College, ca. 1810 (810900.6), Rauner Library, Dartmouth College.

  47. Minutes for 18 January 1814, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Faculty Minutes, I:109, Health Sciences Library, Archives and Special Collections, Columbia University; John C. Dalton, History of the College of Physicians and Surgeons in the City of New York; Medical Department of Columbia College (New York: By order of the College, 1888), 35–36. The stable also appears in the humorous unpublished poem “To Quackery,” in Joseph Rodman Drake and Fitz Greene Halleck, The Croakers (New York: Privately printed, 1860), 129–31, 177. Moses Champion to Dr. Reuben Champion Jr., 11 November 1818 and 7 February 1819, Moses Champion Letters, 1818–1819, Box 1, Folder 32, Health Sciences Library, Archives and Special Collections, Columbia University.

  48. Sappol, Traffic of Dead Bodies, 111–16; “The Late Charles Knowlton, M.D.,” 115–20, 151; “Charles Knowlton” and “Dixi Crosby,” Dartmouth Medical School Student Files, Rauner Library, Dartmouth College; Hill, College on the Hill, 104–5.

  49. Edward H. Dixon, Scenes in the Practice of a New York Surgeon (New York: DeWitt and Davenport, 1855), esp. 28, 231–33; Charles Knowlton, Two Remarkable Lectures Delivered in Boston, by Dr. C. Knowlton, on the Day of His Leaving the Jail at East Cambridge, March 31, 1833, Where He Had Been Imprisoned, for Publishing a Book (Boston: A. Kneeland, 1833). The controversy was over his book on contraception and morals: Fruits of Philosophy: or, the Private Companion of Young Married People (Boston, 1833), which was also published through London. John William Draper, Petition of the Medical Faculty of the University of the City of New-York, to the Honorable the [sic] Senate and Assembly of the State of New-York, for the Legalization of Anatomy. Also an Introductory Lecture, Delivered at the Opening of the Medical Department of the University, for Session 1853–4, and Entitled an Appeal to the People of the State of New-York, to Legalize the Dissection of the Dead (New York: Published by the faculty, 1853). On the history of the medical college of Queen’s College (Rutgers), see Cowen, Medical Education.

  50. Sappol, Traffic of Dead Bodies, 3–5; Wilf, “Anatomy and Punishment in Late Eighteenth-Century New York,” 508–13; Gerard N. Burrow, A History of Yale’s School of Medicine: Passing Torches to Others (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 26–27; Margaret M. Coffin, Death in Early America: The History and Folklore of Customs and Superstitions of Early Medicine, Funerals, Burials, and Mourning (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1976), 189–94.

  51. New-York Morning Post, 15 October 1787; Sappol, Traffic of Dead Bodies, 18. For instance, an account of a dissection published the inhumane effects of whippings on a slave. Independent American, 10 May 1810. David Hosack’s permit to attend at the almshouse for the year beginning 1 January 1789 and samples of tickets to his and other professors’ lectures and demonstrations are available in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Written and Printed Documents, John Dalton Scrapbook, Health Sciences Library, Archives and Special Collections, Columbia University.

  Southern medical colleges followed the northern pattern. The disproportionate use of black people for training and research captured white southerners’ discomfort with human dissection and medical experimentation. In 1807 local physicians organized a medical school in Baltimore, the first in the South. Physicians multiplied the number of southern medical programs in the decades before the Civil War by drawing upon the region’s large black populations for subjects. Forming close ties to poorhouses, city hospitals, and plantations, these medical colleges raked the slave system for patients and specimens. Students at some of the best medical programs in the region, such as those in Charleston and Atlanta, did most of their training on the bodies of African Americans, living and dead.

  The living had other uses. In 1852 the seven faculty members of the Georgia College of Medicine (1835) in Augusta pooled their money and purchased Grandison Harris for $700 at the slave market in Charleston, South Carolina. Harris was then put to work as the medical college’s resurrectionist, digging up new corpses in the evening and carting them back to the laboratories. To hide the illegal seizures and dissections, he scattered the remains in the basement of the medical school, covered them with dirt, and coated the floor with lime to mask the odor. William G. Rothstein, American Medical Schools and the Practice of Medicine: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 28–29; Todd L. Savitt, “The Use of Blacks for Medical Experiments in the Old South,” Journal of Southern History, August 1982, 331–40; Tanya Telfair Sharpe, “Grandison Harris: The Medical College of Georgia’s Resurrection Man,” in Robert L. Blakely and Judith M. Harrington, eds., Bones in the Basement: Postmortem Racism in Nineteenth-Century Medical Training (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997), 3–6, 206–15.

  52. Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, Natural Varieties of Mankind, 3rd ed. (Göttingen, Germany, 1795), in Thomas Bendyshe, ed. and trans., The Anthropological Treatises of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green, 1865), 247–49; Fyfe, Compendium of the Anatomy of the Human Body, I:24; Charles White, An Account of the Regular Gradation in Man, and in Different Animals and Vegetables; and from the Former to the Latter (London: C. Dilly, 1799), esp. 61–67.

  CHAPTER 7: “ON THE BODILY AND MENTAL INFERIORITY OF THE NEGRO”

  1. The Commissioners of the Almshouse v. Alexander Whistelo, a Black Man, General Sessions—New York, August Term, 1808, 1–7, Schomburg Center, New York Public Library. A complete transcript of the trial was immediately available in New York. The Commissioners of the Alms-House, vs. Alexander Whistelo, A Black Man; Being a Remarkable Case of Bastardy, Tried and Adjudged by the Mayor, Recorder, and Several Alderman of the City of New-York, Under the Act Passed 6th March 1801, for the Relief of Cities and Towns from the Maintenance of Bastard Children (New York: David Longworth, 1808). One Baltimore editor noted that the trial “contains the opinions of so many learned men” on the question of generation that it deserved to be reprinted without commentary. See Medical and Philosophical Register, 1 October 1808. On the law and violence against women in colonial society, see Ruth H. Bloch, Gender and Morality in Anglo-American Culture, 1650–1800 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003). On the social and legal culture of Whistelo’s New York, see Shane White, “‘We Dwell in Safety and Pursue Our Honest Callings’: Free Blacks in New York City, 1783–1810,” Journal of American History, September 1988, 445–70.

  2. Almshouse v. Whistelo, 2–5; David Hosack, An Inaugural Dissertation, on Cholera Morbus Submitted to the Examination of the Rev. John Ewing, S.T.P. Provost; the Trustees and Medical Professors of the University of Pennsylvania; for the Degree of Doctor of Medicine: On the Twelfth Day of May, A.D. 1791 (New York: Samuel Campbell, 1791); David Hosack, Syllabus of the Courses of Lectures on the Theory and Practice of Physic and on Obstetrics and the Diseases of Women and Children, Delivered in the University of New-York (New York: Van Winkle, Wiley, 1816); David Hosack, An Inaugural Discourse, Delivered at the Opening of the Rutgers Medical College, in the City of New-York, on Monday the 6th Day of November, 1826 (New York: J. Seymour, 1826), 1
56–59; John Howard Raven, comp. Catalogue of the Officers and Alumni of Rutgers College (Originally Queen’s College) in New Brunswick, N.J., 1766–1916 (Trenton, NJ: State Gazette Publishing, 1916), 64. Jotham Post dedicated his 1793 dissertation to Professor Post. See An Inaugural Dissertation, to Disprove the Existence of Muscular Fibres in the Vessels. Submitted to the Public Examination of the Faculty of Physic, Under the Authority of the Trustees of Columbia College in the State of New-York: William Samuel Johnson, LL.D. President; for the Degree of Doctor of Physic; on the Thirtieth Day of April, 1793 (New York: T. and J. Swords, 1793).

  3. Almshouse v. Whistelo, 5; see Edvardus Miller, M.B., Dissertatio Medica, Inauguralis, de Physconia Splencia. Quam Sub Moderamine Viri Admodum Reverendi D. Joannis Ewing, S.S.T.P. Universitatis Pennsylvaniensis Praefecti … (Philadelphia: G. Young, 1789); see Samuel Latham Mitchill, Edward Miller, and E. H. Smith, Address [to Physicians] (New York: November 15, 1796); Report of the Proceedings of the Medical and Surgical Society of the University of the State of New-York. During the Winter of 1809–10. Being the Third Session of the Society (New York: George Long, 1810), 3–4; Hosack, Inaugural Discourse, Delivered at the Opening of the Rutgers Medical College, 24–33.

  4. Almshouse v. Whistelo, 7–8; Benjaminus Kissam, Dissertatio Medica Inauguralis, Amplectens Quadam de Utero Gravido. Quam, Annuente Summo Numine, Ex Auctoritate Reverendi admondum Viri D. Gulielmi Robertson, S.S.T.P. Academiae Edinburgenae Praelecti … (Edinburgh: Balfour and Smellie, 1783), British Library; Herman Le Roy Fairchild, A History of the New York Academy of Sciences, Formerly the Lyceum of Natural History (New York: By the author, 1887).

  5. Hosack, for instance, was a member of the Linnaean Society of London and the Royal Medical and Physical Society of Edinburgh. Almshouse v. Whistelo, 8–9; David Hosack, Syllabus of the Course of Lectures, on Botany, Delivered in Columbia College (New York: John Childs, 1795); Catalogue of the Officers and Alumni of Rutgers College, 63. Valentine Seaman, of New-York, An Inaugural Dissertation on Opium Submitted to the Examination of John Ewing, S.T.P. Provost; and to the Trustees and Medical Professors of the University of Pennsylvania; for the Degree of Doctor of Medicine: On the Second Day of May, A.D. 1792 (Philadelphia: Johnston and Justice, 1792); Valentine Seaman, The Midwives Monitor, and Mothers Mirror: Being Three Concluding Lectures of a Course of Instruction on Midwifery. Containing Directions for Pregnant Women; Rules for the Management of Natural Births, and for Early Discovering When the Aid of a Physician is Necessary; and Cautions for Nurses Respecting Both the Mother and Child. To Which is Prefixed a Syllabus of Lectures on That Subject (New York: Isaac Collins, 1800).