A Legacy of Scientific Racism: William Osler's "An Alabama Student".
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- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 35038401.
- Also identified by DOI 10.7326/M21-3474.
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Abstract
William Osler's essay "An Alabama Student" made John Young Bassett (1804-1851) a widely admired avatar of idealism in medicine. However, Bassett fiercely attacked the idea that all humans are members of the same species (known as <i>monogenesis</i>) and asserted that Black inferiority was a justification for slavery. Antebellum physician-anthropologists bequeathed a legacy of scientific racism that in subtler forms still runs deep in American society, including in the field of medicine.
Medical subject headings
- Black People
- Enslavement
- Humanism
- Physicians
- Racism
- Textbooks as Topic