African American Slave Medicine: Herbal and Non-Herbal Treatments

Written By: Sam Savage

Published Date: August 23, 2008 Last Edited: August 23, 2008

By Medina, Katherine Bankole

African American Slave Medicine: Herbal and Non-Herbal Treatments. By Herbert C. Covey. (Lanham, Md., and other cities: Lexington Books, c. 2007. Pp. [viii], 207. $85.00, ISBN 978-0-7391- 1644-9.) Herbert C. Covey’s book African American Slave Medicine: Herbal and Non-Herbal Treatments is evidence of the growing scholarly interest in slavery and medicine as a distinct field in the history of science in the United States. Covey’s purpose is to outline how enslaved blacks used medicines in the art and vocation of folk healing during the antebellum period. The study’s data has been largely extracted from the Works Progress Administration (WPA) narratives. Covey trusts these vital documents and considers them to be “major sources of untapped medical information” about slavery (p. 11).

Chapter 1 supplies a concise overview of the field, including a review of the literature. Chapter 2 describes the medical care that whites provided to slaves, and chapter 3 explains the work of enslaved folk-medicine practitioners. The spiritual aspects of “African-based healing practices” are reviewed in chapter 4 (p. 56). Chapter 5 examines the use of specific botanical treatments; chapter 6 keenly depicts nonplant and nonherbal contributions to African Americans’ materia medica. Finally, the last chapter offers a succinct analysis of the subject, along with a note on the persistence of these practices today. In addition, Covey presents three important appendixes: “Plant and Herb Treatments,””Unknown Plant/Herbal Treatments,” and “Non-Plant or Herbal Treatments.”

Covey’s approach is straightforward and impartial. He offers a comprehensive analysis of the literature, judiciously recognizing the work of other historians in this field. At the same time, his contribution stems from an insightful monographic focus and his effort to use the evidence to demonstrate the empowerment of enslaved African Americans in their own medical care. He has also expanded the compendium of plant and herbal treatments known from earlier scholarship. It is clear that Covey has great respect for the complexities of the subject matter and the wide-ranging scholarly precedents. His well-written work does not obsessively challenge the emerging contours of the scholarship in the field of slavery and medicine. Instead, the merits of this work rest in Covey’s revised articulation of established ideas about what the WPA data reveals about African American medicine in the antebellum period. “The scarcity of White formal medical care and its ineffectiveness,” Covey asserts, “fuelled the development of alternative medical systems. These systems included plantation- based care (physicking) and informal slave medicine” (p. 40).

This volume is worthy of a wide readership across disciplines. Covey’s concise work should prove valuable to Americanists specializing in African cultural history. The book would add depth to courses on American slavery because of Covey’s specific attention to critical questions in the African American historical experience. The book’s scholarly frame of social history would undeniably benefit instruction in introductory African American history and other courses. Deficiencies in this work are minor. African American Slave Medicine: Herbal and Non-Herbal Treatments is a precise and substantial work that serves as a functional primer for slavery and medicine in the United States.

KATHERINE BANKOLE MEDINA

West Virginia University

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