Working Cures

May 1, 2002
In this work, which is based on her 1995 Rutgers University dissertation, Fett assesses slave health and medical care in the U.S. South. She portrays slave society as a culture that developed its own healing methods while subject to abuse and racist theories from white medical practitioners. Slave healthcare was an amalgam of various African tribal traditions transmuted by their dispersal throughout the South. Important to these systems were such factors as kinship relations in the community and the role of slave women in healing practices. White medical care of slaves concentrated on their fitness for labor in the household or fields. Written in a lively and engaging style, this book is a unique overview of the complex interaction of white and slave medical care in the antebellum South. Fett, who is currently a visiting scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles, also provides an important background to African American health since the end of slavery. Recommended for academic and large public libraries. A.J. Wright, Univ. of Alabama Lib., Birmingham

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