About the Author

Christopher D. E. Willoughby is a fellow at the Huntington Library and Harvard University. He is also editor of the book Medicine and Healing in the Age of Slavery.

Reviews

"Willoughby powerfully demonstrates that medicalized race thinking was not limited to the South. . . . [H]e artfully untangles the vast web of social and professional connections within the medical community that allowed racial essentialism to garner adherents, and long after emancipation. . . . [E]ssential reading not just for historians and doctors but for anyone seeking to grapple with the painful history of medicalized racism."--Journal of African American History

"Willoughby's debut monograph makes an important contribution both to histories of medical education and to the historicization of current racialized disparities in healthcare. . . . [A] thorough and expansive piece of scholarship, adding much to our understanding of the history of race and medicine in the US context. . . . [T]his work forms a key foundation on which assessments of how these theories of racial difference and hierarchy have embedded themselves within the modern medical curriculum, and medical research practices can build."--British Journal for the History of Science

"Willoughby provides us with a helpful set of analytics through which to understand how American medical racism and scientific racism grew up together, functioning as a transfer of Southern slavery ideology to the North, reinforcing the institution of slavery in the South, and spurring the evolution of polygenetic conceptions of race as a biological truth."--Technology and Culture

"An important book, building on an emerging body of work focused on exploring the centrality of medicine to the construction of ideas about race in the nineteenth-century United States, the perpetuation of race-based slavery, and the expansion of capitalism throughout the nation. Willoughby's compelling study makes a valuable contribution to these historiographical fields, drawing much-needed attention to the complicity of northern medical schools in shaping ideas about race in an antebellum America and on shores beyond."--Journal of Southern History

"...Highly thought-provoking and timely in understanding the history of U.S...The book makes a compelling connection between our experiences today and 19th-century medical training in the United States."--LAMPHHS's The Watermark

"A compelling exploration of how ideas about race were constructed by American medical professionals in the nineteenth century and then used to increase their recognition as experts. . . [A] valuable addition to the historiography."--Journal of American History