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Black History Facts

The Medicine Men

DID YOU KNOW…the black man brought with him from Africa a medicine that flourished in Colonial America.  They had their medicine-men and conjure-women, but they also had their own “material medica,” the product of centuries of practical experience.  They knew the medicinal value of a wide-assortment of mineral, plant, and herb mixes with the result that “root doctoring” occupied a prominent place in the therapeutic arsenal of many Southern plantations.  They even knew of the practice of “buying the smallpox.”  The white minister credited with introducing this practice into the colonies in the early 18^th Century learned of it from a Negro slave.  Negro midwives brought medical knowledge from Africa concerning birth by Caesarian Section.  With such a background, Negro slaves took to the healing arts.

As early as 1740, a fugitive slave was described as “being able to bleed and draw teeth.”  In 1751, a Negro named Cesar discovered a cure for rattlesnake bite.  Another slave-born Negro, David K. McDonough, was licensed to practice medicine and served on the staff of New York’s Eye and Ear Infirmary.  The first private hospital for blacks in New York was named in his honor.

Santomee, a slave, was trained in Holland and studied medicine among the Dutch and English in New York.  Another slave, Oneissimus, developed an antidote for smallpox in 1721. Other early black physicians most of whom were self-taught, included James Still (1810), David Ruggies (1810) and William Wells Brown (1816); all were also well-known abolitionists

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