Antebellum medical pseudoscience legitimated and helped maintain enslavement

Evidence

Hamilton was a courtly Southern gentleman, a wealthy plantation owner, a respected physician, and a trustee of the Medical Academy of Georgia. Like many other Southern doctors of the era, he sought to scientifically prove that Black bodies were composed and functioned differently than white bodies. This was in keeping with the prevailing view of Southern white society at the time: that enslaved people were fit for little besides forced labor. Hamilton and other doctors bolstered this view, arguing that Black people had large sex organs and small skulls, which translated to promiscuity and a lack of intelligence and a higher tolerance for heat. These invented “facts,” legitimized in medical journals, justified the barbaric violence of whipping and torture used to maintain slavery. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 971

Categorization

• CANDY: The invented ‘facts’ about skulls and sex organs mapping to promiscuity and heat tolerance is a dark but tweetable bit of historical absurdity.
• XREF: Parallels the argument elsewhere in 1619 that invented racial science (e.g. the 3/5 compromise rationale, biological determinism) legitimated slavery — connects to the broader ‘deviation vs design’ framing.