M&D related "drapetomania"

[pynchonoid]

This site reminded me of the M&D discussion of slavery
and those ungrateful slaves of Washington's who kept
running away from his "benevolent" treatment...

http://www.co.broward.fl.us/lii13000.htm
DRAPETOMANIA
A Disease Called Freedom
An Exhibition of 18th-, 19th- and Early 20th-Century
Material Culture of the African Experience in the
Americas from the Collection of Derrick Joshua Beard

The title of the exhibition is taken from an article
in the monthly Southern journal entitled The Georgia
Blister and Critic, v. 1, #7 (Sept. 1854), p. 156
(exhibit #20). The journal dealt with the “diseases
and physical peculiarities of the Negro race.” In the
article, the word drapetomania was created by the
noted Louisiana surgeon and psychologist Dr. Samuel A.
Cartwright by combining the Greek words for runaway
slave and mad or crazy. It was used to describe the
mental disease that “induces the negro to run away
from service, [and] is as much a disease of the mind
as any other species of mental alienation, and much
more curable, as a general rule.” 

Utilizing surviving material culture objects, the
exhibit attempts to outline the African experience in
the Americas from its earliest manifestations in
Africa, Colombia, and the Caribbean island of
Hispañola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic) to the
first part of the 20th century in the United States.
DRAPETOMANIA is sub-arranged by the following
sections: Haiti; Slavery; Early Enslaved Muslims;
Abolitionism (Anti-Slavery); Children’s Anti-Slavery;
New Orleans; Black Military; Reconstruction and
Post-Civil War; African Americans on the Frontier; and
Slave Songs and African-American Music. For the
viewer, many of the documented events on exhibit will
be difficult and troublesome since they depict, often
in horrific terms, the subjugation of one race over
another. On the other hand, there are also items that
provide hope and encouragement and that lift the
spirit. The objects were often created under wearisome
and arduous conditions, yet they serve as a permanent
record of the ordinary and the often extraordinary
genius of Africans in the Americas and of Americans of
African descent in the U.S. 

James A. Findlay, Librarian 
Bienes Center for the Literary Arts
[...] 

also see (at a Cornell alumni website, no less):
http://upalumni.org/medschool/appendices/appendix-43.html

-Doug


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