Antebellum physicians fabricated racial physiology claims to justify slavery

Evidence

Samuel Cartwright, a physician and professor of “diseases of the Negro” at the University of Louisiana in New Orleans, now Tulane University. His widely circulated paper “Report on the Diseases and Physical Peculiarities of the Negro Race,” published in the May 1851 issue of The New-Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, cataloged supposed physical differences between white people and Black people, including the claim that Black people had lower lung capacity—what he called “vital capacity.” To pursue this theory, he became one of the first doctors in the United States to measure pulmonary function with an instrument called a spirometer. According to his subsequent “calculations,” “the deficiency in the Negro may be safely estimated at 20 percent.” Cartwright, conveniently, saw forced labor as a way to “vitalize” the blood and correct the problem. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 967

Categorization

• XREF: Follows directly from Jefferson’s baseless ‘distinctions which nature has made’ in the preceding paragraph — a chain of manufactured racial science.
• SHARE: For a medical-history friend: Cartwright was among the first US doctors to use a spirometer, and he weaponized his own measurements to conclude Black lung capacity was deficient by 20%.