Syringes and Speculums: Unveiling Medical Practices at Sea During the Transatlantic Slave Trade Era, 1700s and 1800s

Abstract

This thesis delves into the shadowy realm of medical procedures carried out on slave ships during the Transatlantic Slave Trade with an emphasis on the use of tools like syringes and speculums. The medical implications of the slave trade are still poorly understood, despite the economic and social aspects having gotten a lot of attention. Using material culture from archaeological assemblages, historical documents, and testimonies from Africans held in slavery, this study reconstructs the role of medical practices and instruments on slave ships. Historical narratives and surgeons' logs reveal that treatment was often influenced more by profit and control than by humanitarian care, while artifacts from shipwrecks, such as La Concorde/Queen Annes Revenge, Henrietta Marie and Fredensborg, provide tangible evidence of medical equipment. The study argues that the treatment of slaves on the slave ships was somewhere between healing and coercion. Systems of dominance were represented in the coercive treatments and intrusive inspections used to keep enslaved Africans alive as commodities to be sold. This study demonstrates how the material culture of medicine—its instruments, therapies, and procedures—can reveal the intricacy and brutality of life on slave ships while recognizing historical injustices to current debates about medical ethics and health disparities.