Christopher Willoughby — Masters of Health: Racial Science and Slavery in U.S. Medical Schools

In this episode of Perspectives we speak with Christopher Willoughby, author of Masters of Health: Racial Science and Slavery in U.S. Medical Schools. Masters of Health examines how the founders of U.S. medical schools promoted an understanding of race influenced by the theory of polygenesis—that each race was created separately and as different species—which they supported by training students to collect and measure human skulls from around the world. Medical students came to see themselves as masters of Black people's bodies through stealing Black people's corpses, experimenting on enslaved people, and practicing distinctive therapeutics on Black patients. In documenting these practices Masters of Health charts the rise of racist theories in U.S. medical schools, throwing new light on the extensive legacies of slavery in modern medicine. For more resources on this topic, please see https://www.chstm.org/video/173 Recorded on October 30, 2023.