Night Doctors (also known as Night Riders, Night Witches, Ku Klux Doctors and Student Doctors) are bogeymen of African American folklore, resulting from some factual basis.
The term Night Doctor is often broadly used, referring to doctors who would illegally or unethically find means of procuring African American corpses for study during cadaver shortages – a result of southern black bodies being a valuable resource for dissection and autopsy studies in medical colleges. [1] Multiple methods were used, the most common being graverobbing (or body snatching) of impoverished communities; other doctors would pay slave owners for the bodies of deceased slaves. [2] For many slaves, death was thought of as the time their body would finally rest and suffer no longer. In contrast, many slave owners believed they had right to a slave's body even after death. Other Night Doctors, known as Needle Men or Black Bottle Men, would secretly poison African American patients for their cadavers after death. Stories of graverobbing, murder, and various enforced medical experimentation led to the development of African American folklore that told of doctors who would abduct, kill, and dissect bodies. [2]
Throughout the late 18th and early 19th centuries in the United States, the demand for cadavers exceeded the supply when hands-on dissection became popular in medical schools. [3] The importance of human bodies in explaining general anatomy and fundamental methods like amputation has existed since ancient times. However, the need was intensified in the 19th century by the increased acceptability of dissecting human bodies. [2] [4] The necessity for dead bodies was met by grave-robbing and using slave bodies. The government put into place various countermeasures to deter grave robbers. However, these measures took time and money. Therefore, African American bodies were the most common ones to be robbed since they were legally, economically, and socially disadvantaged. [5] Hence, the most frequent targets of grave robbers were African Americans, immigrants, and the impoverished. Grave robbers avoided stealing white American bodies because the dissection of white cadavers carried far greater risks for physicians. [6] The bodies of African Americans were often sold to chattel for dissection by slave owners after their death. [1] There is an overwhelming amount of evidence suggesting that the bodies of impoverished people, African Americans, and underprivileged individuals were used to improve the medical training of white elites. [7] Grave robbers and their crimes were frequently overlooked by white Americans since grave robbing had no direct impact on them. [3] The tales of night doctors, who bought and stole bodies, became part of African American history and traditions.
Body snatching increased during the post-revolutionary period because medical students started to perform dissections rather than simply observing professors. [8] In the early 19th century, most states legislated against grave robbery. Even though grave robbing was formally prohibited, the penalty was comparatively light since grave robbing was considered misconduct rather than a felony. [2] The punishment for grave robbing was a possible fine and a short period of imprisonment. Due to these permissive attitudes, relatives of the lately departed had to take it upon themselves to watch their loved ones' graves. [3] Following this, grave robbery was very frequent even though there were laws prohibiting it in some states. Because of grave robbing, several riots took place between 1765 and 1852, the most well-known of which was New York Doctors' Riot of 1788. [6] In the New York Doctors' riot of 1788, the unauthorized acquisition of bodies from the graves of the recently departed sparked a massive outburst of anger and dissatisfaction among impoverished people, specifically aimed at doctors and medical trainees. [1] In January 1789, a year after the riot, a law was successfully passed that regulated the appropriate treatment of dead bodies, with heavy penalties inflicted on anyone who disobeyed the law. [2] The Warburton Anatomy Act of 1832, which handed unclaimed remains to scientists and eventually ended grave robbery in Britain, was instrumental in enacting legislation in the United States that curtailed grave robbing. [9] Massachusetts passed an identical, albeit less harshly worded, Anatomy Act of 1831, which legalized the use of dead bodies for dissection and anatomical studies. [10] [11] Most states soon passed similar legislation, and by the turn of the century, cadavers were almost entirely sourced from unclaimed remains.
An example of a medical college that used the bodies of African Americans, immigrants, and impoverished people is the Medical College of Georgia. [12] Excavations at the Medical College of Georgia in 1989 yielded more than 9,000 bones. No records exist, and none of the remains have been identified, but it fits the inflammatory story to claim that they were mainly from working-class individuals and approximately 80% of those were African Americans. [2] In addition to being the majority of cadavers, many teaching hospitals would only perform new live surgical techniques and demonstrations on African American patients. [13] The consequences of employing the majority of African American bodies led to the dehumanization of African American people in the medical system, a lack of confidence between African American people and medical experts, and a reluctance among African American people to donate their bodies for medical purposes. [14] The inordinate use of African American bodies for autopsy and medical studies unwittingly formed a view of black people as nothing more than medical experimentation material. [2] [12] The usage of African American bodies as experimental subjects has a long history in the United States, dating back to the use of Henrietta Lacks' cancer cells for research purposes without her proper consent to the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. [4] In both of these instances, patients did not give consent to the medical projects and research being done on them. They were not informed and were blatantly misled. Medical injustice to people of color still remains, leaving a mistrust of the medical system throughout the country. [1]
Johns Hopkins Hospital and New Orleans' Charity Hospital (now replaced by the UMCNO) are noted originators of student Night Doctor stories. Cadavers used by Johns Hopkins University were highly disproportionate (2/3 African American) to the surrounding population at the time, [15] and Charity Hospital was known for multiple racist incidents. [16] Many African Americans were distrusting of the hospitals, or told by older generations to avoid them. A quotee from The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks once explained that,
You'd be surprised how many people disappeared in East Baltimore when I was a girl. I'm telling you, I lived here in the fifties when they got Henrietta, and we weren't allowed to go anywhere near Hopkins. When it got dark and we were young, we had to be on the steps, or Hopkins might get us. [17]
Both hospitals contributed to stories of Night Doctors with specific killing habits.
The Needle Men would poke unsuspecting individuals in the arm with a poisoned needle; after death, records would be falsified to give other explanations for the victim's passing.
I sure don't go out much at this time of year. You take a chance just walkin' on the streets. Them Needle Men's is everywhere. They always come 'round in the fall, and they're 'round to about March. You see, them Needle Mens is medical students from the Charity Hospital tryin' to git your body to work on. That's 'cause stiffs are very scarce at this time of the year. [16]
The Black Bottle Men would offer African American patients a black bottle of 'medicine,' leading to their death shortly afterwards. The bottle is now thought to have contained a mixture of cascara and milk of magnesia, which when properly administered worked as a common laxative of the period. Incorrect usage, however, could cause severe side effects.
Night Doctors, as well as other systemic and racial issues in American medicine (the most notable being the Tuskegee Syphilis Study), have left many modern-day repercussions on black communities in search of medical care. Many medical studies performed on African Americans were done without their consent, [18] leaving some today distrusting and wary of the medical system which has wronged them in the past. African American communities tend to be underfunded, with less access to health care, education, insurance, and resources; [19] and certain African American patients, taken less seriously by medical professionals, have been denied pain medication because they are perceived to be faking or in less pain. [20]
The history of anatomy extends from the earliest examinations of sacrificial victims to the sophisticated analyses of the body performed by modern anatomists and scientists. Written descriptions of human organs and parts can be traced back thousands of years to ancient Egyptian papyri, where attention to the body was necessitated by their highly elaborate burial practices.
The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male was a study conducted between 1932 and 1972 by the United States Public Health Service (PHS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on a group of nearly 400 African American men with syphilis. The purpose of the study was to observe the effects of the disease when untreated, though by the end of the study medical advancements meant it was entirely treatable. The men were not informed of the nature of the experiment, and more than 100 died as a result.
The history of anatomy in the 19th century saw anatomists largely finalise and systematise the descriptive human anatomy of the previous century. The discipline also progressed to establish growing sources of knowledge in histology and developmental biology, not only of humans but also of animals.
Dissection is the dismembering of the body of a deceased animal or plant to study its anatomical structure. Autopsy is used in pathology and forensic medicine to determine the cause of death in humans. Less extensive dissection of plants and smaller animals preserved in a formaldehyde solution is typically carried out or demonstrated in biology and natural science classes in middle school and high school, while extensive dissections of cadavers of adults and children, both fresh and preserved are carried out by medical students in medical schools as a part of the teaching in subjects such as anatomy, pathology and forensic medicine. Consequently, dissection is typically conducted in a morgue or in an anatomy lab.
Body snatching is the illicit removal of corpses from graves, morgues, and other burial sites. Body snatching is distinct from the act of grave robbery as grave robbing does not explicitly involve the removal of the corpse, but rather theft from the burial site itself. The term 'body snatching' most commonly refers to the removal and sale of corpses primarily for the purpose of dissection or anatomy lectures in medical schools. The term was coined primarily in regard to cases in the United Kingdom and United States throughout the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. However, there have been cases of body snatching in many countries, with the first recorded case dating back to 1319 in Bologna, Italy.
Philip Syng Physick was an American physician and professor born in Philadelphia. He was the first professor of surgery and later of anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania medical school from 1805 to 1831 during which time he was a highly influential teacher. Physick invented a number of surgical devices and techniques including the stomach tube and absorbable sutures. He has been called the "Father of American Surgery."
Grave robbery, tomb robbing, or tomb raiding is the act of uncovering a grave, tomb or crypt to steal commodities. It is usually perpetrated to take and profit from valuable artefacts or personal property. A related act is body snatching, a term denoting the contested or unlawful taking of a body, which can be extended to the unlawful taking of organs alone.
The Anatomy Act 1832 is an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom that gave free licence to doctors, teachers of anatomy and bona fide medical students to dissect donated bodies. It was enacted in response to public revulsion at the illegal trade in corpses.
Gross anatomy is the study of anatomy at the visible or macroscopic level. The counterpart to gross anatomy is the field of histology, which studies microscopic anatomy. Gross anatomy of the human body or other animals seeks to understand the relationship between components of an organism in order to gain a greater appreciation of the roles of those components and their relationships in maintaining the functions of life. The study of gross anatomy can be performed on deceased organisms using dissection or on living organisms using medical imaging. Education in the gross anatomy of humans is included training for most health professionals.
The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp is a 1632 oil painting on canvas by Rembrandt housed in the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, the Netherlands. It was originally created to be displayed by the Surgeons Guild in their meeting room. The painting is regarded as one of Rembrandt's early masterpieces.
Murder for body parts also known as medicine murder refers to the killing of a human being in order to excise body parts to use as medicine or purposes in witchcraft. Medicine murder is viewed as the obtaining of an item or items from a corpse to be used in traditional medicine. The practice occurs primarily in sub-equatorial Africa.
Friedrich Schlemm was a German anatomist who was professor at the University of Berlin.
A cadaver or corpse is a dead human body. Cadavers are used by medical students, physicians and other scientists to study anatomy, identify disease sites, determine causes of death, and provide tissue to repair a defect in a living human being. Students in medical school study and dissect cadavers as a part of their education. Others who study cadavers include archaeologists and arts students. In addition, a cadaver may be used in the development and evaluation of surgical instruments.
The Medical Renaissance, from around 1400 to 1700 CE, was a period of progress in European medical knowledge, with renewed interest in the ideas of the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations along with Arabic-Persian medicine, following the translation into Latin of many works from these societies. Medical discoveries during the Medical Renaissance are credited with paving the way for modern medicine.
A prosection is the dissection of a cadaver or part of a cadaver by an experienced anatomist in order to demonstrate for students anatomic structure. In a dissection, students learn by doing; in a prosection, students learn by either observing a dissection being performed by an experienced anatomist or examining a specimen that has already been dissected by an experienced anatomist.
An anatomy murder is a murder committed in order to use all or part of the cadaver for medical research or teaching. It is not a medicine murder because the body parts are not believed to have any medicinal use in themselves. The motive for the murder is created by the demand for cadavers for dissection, and the opportunity to learn anatomy and physiology as a result of the dissection. Rumors concerning the prevalence of anatomy murders are associated with the rise in demand for cadavers in research and teaching produced by the Scientific Revolution. During the 19th century, the sensational serial murders associated with Burke and Hare and the London Burkers led to legislation which provided scientists and medical schools with legal ways of obtaining cadavers. Rumors persist that anatomy murders are carried out wherever there is a high demand for cadavers. These rumors, like those concerning organ theft, are hard to substantiate, and may reflect continued, deep-held fears of the use of cadavers as commodities.
Resurrectionists were body snatchers who were commonly employed by anatomists in the United Kingdom during the 18th and 19th centuries to exhume the bodies of the recently dead. Between 1506 and 1752 only a very few cadavers were available each year for anatomical research. The supply was increased when, in an attempt to intensify the deterrent effect of the death penalty, Parliament passed the Murder Act 1752. By allowing judges to substitute the public display of executed criminals with dissection, the new law significantly increased the number of bodies anatomists could legally access. This proved insufficient to meet the needs of the hospitals and teaching centres that opened during the 18th century. Corpses and their component parts became a commodity, but although the practice of disinterment was hated by the general public, bodies were not legally anyone's property. The resurrectionists therefore operated in a legal grey area.
The doctors' riot was an incident that occurred in April 1788 in New York City, where the illegal procurement of corpses from the graves of the recently deceased caused a mass expression of discontent from poorer New Yorkers that was directed primarily at physicians and medical students.
The Pennsylvania Anatomy Act of 1883 is legislation of the State of Pennsylvania to facilitate medical education. This act allowed teachers and students to be able to dissect bodies without have to resort to buying from grave robbers or buying body parts. This act was written to prevent grave robbing, and to even out the availability of corpses.
As anatomy classes in medical education proliferated in the 19th century, so too did the need for bodies to dissect. Grave robbery proliferated, along with associated social discontent, revulsion, and unhappiness. Conflicts arose between medical practitioners and defenders of bodies, graves and graveyards. This resulted in riots. Social legislation was passed in many countries to address the competing concerns.