Anti-poison laws repressed traditional healing because poison gave slaves power over masters

Evidence

Starting in the seventeenth century, colonial legislation outlawed the use of poison, in the process repressing forms of traditional healing practiced within the slave community that whites often used as well. The reasons for this proscription were clear enough. Poison granted power. Slaves who used poison against whites aimed “to dominate their masters” and humiliate them by making them feel “a power that was hidden, but very close.” — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 202

Categorization

• XREF: Parallel to the reader’s interest in how colonizers proscribed indigenous/enslaved knowledge systems that doubled as resistance tools.