The Morris Dillard Lecture: Racial Science and Slavery in U.S. Medical Schools: A Roundtable Discussion

December 09, 2022

November 30, 2022

Christopher D.E. Willoughby, PhD

Visiting Assistant Professor of History of Medicine and Health, Pitzer College

Author, Masters of Health: Racial Science and Slavery in U.S. Medical Schools

Discussants:

Liana DeMarco, PhD

Post-doctoral fellow, History of Medicine, Yale School of Medicine

Sean Morey Smith, PhD

Post-doctoral fellow, History of Medicine, Yale School of Medicine

ChinyeIjeli

Medical student, Yale School of Medicine

Moderator

Carolyn Roberts, PhD

Assistant Professor, History of Science & History of Medicine;

African American Studies, Yale University

Information

ID: 9261
To Cite: DCA Citation Guide

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00:00So welcome, everybody.
00:02I'm Anna Reesman, director of the
00:04Program for Humanities and Medicine,
00:06and I'm really excited for tonight's.
00:08Session which as you all know will be
00:11a round table discussion on racial
00:13science and slavery in US medical schools
00:15featuring Christopher Willoughby,
00:17Sean Smith, Leanna DeMarco,
00:19Jinyue Jaylee and moderated
00:21by Carolyn Roberts.
00:23The event is Co sponsored
00:25by my colleague Doctor John
00:28Horner and a section of History
00:29of Medicine and it's been
00:31wonderful honor to work with
00:33John on thinking through
00:34this event tonight and all of its nuances
00:37and John is going to give you some more.
00:40Really interesting background on how
00:41we got here in a couple of minutes.
00:44In the meantime, I want to thank Karen Colby,
00:46especially Kathleen Keenan for figuring
00:48out all the complicated logistics. And
00:51also thank you very much to Antonio
00:54and Jay are ASL interpreters
00:55for being here with us tonight.
00:59So this is the Morris Dillard
01:01lecture and I want to just take
01:02a minute to say a couple words
01:04about Doctor Morris Dillard and
01:06then I will turn things over to to John.
01:09This lectureship began
01:11in 2000, and
01:13the fund that supports this talk was created
01:15by Doctor Dillard's former students.
01:18He was part of the Yale General Medicine
01:20faculty based in the primary care center,
01:22and in the mid 1970s he founded
01:25what became known as the Wednesday
01:27Evening Clinic and served as its
01:30director for several decades.
01:32The Wednesday Evening Clinic,
01:33which is currently under the directorship
01:35of Doctor Pinar Oray Schrom,
01:36has trained generations of Yale
01:38Medical students on the essence
01:40of primary care and is known as a
01:42training site that was far ahead
01:43of its time in this regard.
01:46Doctor Dillard is remembered
01:47by many YS M grads
01:49for his wonderful mentorship and teaching,
01:51for interviewing more Med school applicants
01:53than anyone else ever, I believe,
01:55and also for preparing and sharing elaborate
01:58dinners for faculty and students both at
02:00the clinic and at his home. And finally,
02:03I'll just say that Doctor Dillard,
02:05who died about four years ago,
02:07taught students in the Wednesday evening
02:09clinic something that most students
02:10don't learn until residency or later,
02:12which is the real the art
02:14of real responsibility.
02:16To care, yes, but to take the next steps
02:20of demonstrating and doing the Karen,
02:21following up,
02:22checking in and just being there
02:24for their clinic patients when
02:25they were needed. So. Very happy to have
02:30today's talk as the Dillard Lecture
02:33and thank you everybody and I'm
02:35going to turn things over to John.
02:45Thank you, Anna, and thank
02:46you for those of you who
02:49came out in the rain.
02:51I think there are something
02:53over 50 people on zoom already,
02:57and we don't hate you just
02:58because you have dry feet.
03:00Today, I'm John Warner and I chair history
03:04of medicine here at the medical school.
03:07And I just wanted to say a very
03:09brief word on the project that from
03:13which this roundtable grew last year
03:17inspired by the Yale and Slavery
03:20Working Group that the that is being
03:23conducted for the university as a whole,
03:27led by my colleague in history,
03:28David Blight,
03:29Dean Nancy Brown here at the medical school,
03:32ask Dean Darren Lattimore and
03:35me to convene a group to.
03:38Discuss possibilities for a deeper
03:41historical investigation of the
03:43relationship between slavery and
03:45the Yale School of Medicine,
03:47and The upshot is a one year pilot
03:50project that seeks to explore the
03:52entanglements of our medical school
03:55with the institution of slavery.
03:57Both our moderator and keynote speaker,
04:00Carolyn Roberts and Chris Willoughby
04:02have been both of them have been
04:05enormously generous in their
04:07time and thought.
04:08And helping me think through
04:11and chart our course.
04:13For for this particular project,
04:15Dean Brown is also funded 2
04:18postdoctoral research fellows
04:20Leona de Marco and Sean Smith,
04:22historians at science sorry historians
04:25of medicine and slavery who are
04:28also here with us on the panel
04:30who began working on the project,
04:32began research early this semester.
04:36Our aim is to begin to show
04:39how the culture of slavery,
04:41racial capitalism and the ideologies
04:44of scientific racism were infused into
04:47the fabric of a medical school located
04:50in a New England port city that was
04:54engaged in the West Indian trade.
04:56And really the ongoing research,
04:59their ongoing research I should say
05:02is focused on the medical schools
05:05relationship to the slave trade.
05:07Especially financial benefits and
05:10networks of racial capitalism,
05:13the content of medical education,
05:15including scientific racism,
05:17and how racial difference,
05:20especially biological difference,
05:22appeared in the curriculum and the
05:26relationship of the Yale Medical
05:28School to the New Haven community,
05:30including here the use of African
05:32descended bodies in the production
05:35of medical knowledge and in the
05:37training of medical students.
05:39The stories that have begun to emerge
05:42really are are their star tell,
05:44not mine,
05:45as much as I'd like to tell them myself,
05:48and I'm very much looking forward to
05:50their comments and and reflections.
05:52But one thing that's already clear
05:55is is just how pervasive scientific
05:57racism was in medical teaching
06:00and learning here at Yale,
06:03often presented with in lectures for
06:06students with a dearth of elaboration.
06:09Suggesting to us that many of these
06:11ideas about the medical meanings
06:13of racial difference and the
06:16medicalization of blackness were were
06:18so self-evident that they just they
06:21really didn't need to be elaborated
06:23by special comments or explanation
06:26by the medical professors here.
06:29We're still sorting out the best
06:31ways to share our findings both
06:34within the medical school and within
06:36the larger New Haven community.
06:39But it's clear that one aim we
06:42share is finding ways to integrate this work
06:46into medical education in some ongoing way.
06:50And with that, let me turn to
06:54introducing the the speakers and
06:57panelists for this afternoon.
07:00Christopher Willoughby is an historian
07:02of slavery and medicine in the United
07:05States and a visiting assistant professor
07:06in the history of medicine and health
07:09at the Pritzker College in Claremont, CA.
07:11He's the author of the book
07:14Masters of Health, Racial Science,
07:17and Slavery in US Medical Schools,
07:20which was published this month
07:22just a couple of weeks ago by the
07:26University of North Carolina Press.
07:28Recent enough, that one.
07:29Review has come out,
07:31but it's in science and it's glowing,
07:33so that's a good start.
07:35Many, many others follow.
07:38With Sean Smith,
07:39he edited a book titled Medicine
07:42and Healing in the Age of Slavery,
07:45published by Louisiana
07:47State University Press.
07:49He's also written academic and popular
07:51articles in places like the Journal of the
07:54History of Medicine and Allied Sciences,
07:56the Journal of Southern History,
07:58and the Washington Post.
08:01Sean Morey Smith,
08:03we're not going actually in order here.
08:07Yes, OK,
08:09you've identified.
08:11Sean Smith is a postdoctoral
08:13research associate here in the
08:15School of Medicine examining the
08:18historical relationship between
08:19slavery and our medical school.
08:22He earned his PhD degree
08:24at Rice University in 2020,
08:26and his own research examines
08:29how medical ideas of health and
08:32climate were used to alternatively
08:35support and to attack racialized
08:38slavery in the Anglophone Atlantic.
08:41She's currently completing a
08:42book manuscript related to that
08:45research with a working title,
08:47the climate of race in abolition,
08:49circa 1730 to 1860.
08:54Shawn has also previously published
08:55research in journals such as
08:57Slavery and Abolition, Abolition,
08:59Medical History and Urban History,
09:02as well as again Co editing
09:06the collection with with.
09:10The collection of medicine and healing
09:12in the age of slavery with Chris Willoughby,
09:14as well as editing a collection
09:17Atlantic environments in the American S.
09:20Xinyue ijele.
09:28Is a MD candidate here at
09:30the Yale School of Medicine,
09:33currently completing a research here
09:35between her third and 4th 4th year.
09:38Her research interest include health equality
09:41and the politics of healthcare reform.
09:44With her. With her classmates,
09:48Jinyue developed a didactic session
09:51on biological racism in medicine.
09:54For the first year,
09:57MD student class and has published
10:00an evaluation of that session.
10:02In clinical teacher versions of this
10:07session have been a of the session that
10:11she initiated had been a mandatory part
10:14of the Yale MD curriculum since 2020.
10:19Uh. Though through many other
10:24extracurricular activities,
10:26she for years as an advocate for students
10:29and patients from marginalized backgrounds.
10:34Leona de Marco, identify herself.
10:37Leona. OK, thank you.
10:39We're running out of people.
10:40So I think it it's starting to become clear
10:43is a postdoctoral research associate,
10:46also here at the Yale School of Medicine,
10:48as part of the slavery project.
10:51She received her doctorate degree in
10:54the Department of History and the
10:56Program for the History of Science and
10:59Medicine here at Yale in May of 2022.
11:03Her research focuses on histories
11:05of medicine, race,
11:07and capitalism in the United
11:08States and in the Caribbean,
11:11most especially in Cuba.
11:13She's currently writing a book on the
11:16management of Enslaved Peoples Health,
11:19and the medicalization of their productivity.
11:22Of their labor on plantations in
11:25Louisiana and in Cuba.
11:27Her other writings,
11:28or some of her other writings,
11:30can be found in the Journal of Southern
11:32History and in the Journal of the
11:35History of Medicine and Allied Sciences.
11:37And finally, our moderator at the end,
11:42my colleague Carolyn Roberts,
11:44is an historian of medicine and
11:47science on the faculty here at Yale.
11:50She joined our faculty right after
11:53receiving her PhD degree in History
11:55of Science at Harvard and holds joint
11:59appointments in the departments of History,
12:02History of Science and Medicine,
12:03and African American Studies she also holds.
12:08Secondary appointment here in the medical
12:10school in our history of Medicine Department.
12:13Her research interests concerned
12:14the history of race,
12:16science and medicine in the context of
12:19slavery and the Atlantic slave trade.
12:23This includes attention to the
12:25critical role played by African and
12:28African descended medical and health
12:31knowledge in the Atlantic world.
12:33Doctor Roberts is currently working
12:35on several book manuscripts.
12:37Including one that has the title
12:40to heal and harm medicine,
12:43knowledge and power in the
12:45British slave trade,
12:47which is under advanced contract
12:49with Harvard University Press.
12:51In her teaching,
12:52she uses history as a platform
12:54for exploring exploring present
12:56day crises related to race,
12:58racism and health,
13:00and she is the 2021 recipient of Yale's
13:05prestigious Klaus Prize for teaching.
13:07Excellence in the humanities,
13:09and maybe I can close by just giving
13:12you a a sort of quantified sense
13:15of how popular her teaching is.
13:18She's has a lecture course that
13:20she's teaching next semester,
13:22registration just open and it's
13:24already over 500 people who would
13:26like to take the course making it,
13:29I believe and in fact I don't believe,
13:31I'm absolutely certain the largest
13:33humanities course offered at Yale
13:36University. And so with that.
13:38I will turn it over to you, Caroline.
13:43Thank you so much.
13:45It's wonderful to be here.
13:46I'm thrilled to have the opportunity
13:49to participate in this important
13:51discussion on racial science and
13:53slavery in US medical schools.
13:56In a 2021 article published by a
13:59recent graduate of Yale Medical School,
14:01Max Jordan Tiako.
14:03He wrote the following.
14:05Quote historical and contemporary
14:08patterns of racial exclusion
14:11fundamentally shape medical schools,
14:13and current institutional structures
14:15often serve to entrench rather than
14:19dismantle racial inequality for students,
14:22faculty, and patients.
14:24End Quote.
14:25So it can be challenging for many
14:28to wrap their minds around how
14:30and why racial inequities exist in
14:33American medicine and healthcare.
14:35But we now have over 2 decades of
14:38research that conclusively proves
14:40that a patient's race or ethnicity
14:43negatively impacts the quality and
14:45type of care that they receive.
14:48Unequal treatment is not new.
14:51It's part of a long and complicated
14:54history of medical practice and
14:56healthcare in this country.
14:58This is a history that we have
15:00yet to fully reckon with.
15:02But it's critical for understanding
15:04how we got here,
15:05to this particular moment
15:08in American medicine.
15:09So doctor Chris Wilby,
15:11who I'm thrilled to welcome today,
15:14is offering us an important
15:16part of this history.
15:18One of the missing pieces that we've
15:20had in understanding the history
15:22of race and medicine in the United
15:25States concerns medical schools.
15:27Very little historical literature exists
15:29concerning the role of medical education.
15:33In fostering unequal treatment,
15:35Doctor Willoughby,
15:36who I will now respectively call Chris,
15:40has authored a groundbreaking book
15:42that offers us such a vantage point.
15:45His book Masters of Health,
15:46which is based on deep archival research.
15:50Does an excellent job of demonstrating
15:53how racial science was embedded
15:55in medical school education from
15:57the very beginning.
15:58As Chris writes,
16:00quote this book helps explain why
16:02racial thinking rooted in the history
16:05of slavery has been so difficult to
16:08expunge from contemporary medical practice.
16:11End Quote.
16:12So I'm going to turn
16:13things over now to Chris,
16:15and then we will hear from
16:18Leanna and Sean and Shania.
16:21Thank you,
16:21Chris.
16:23Thank you. I I was excited when I heard that,
16:25you know, three extra students wanted
16:27to get into my history of modern
16:29medicine lecture, so I'm going to
16:31try and share my screen here. That.
16:37And then hopefully I'm going to look forward
16:39the whole time after that.
16:44Yes.
16:53Close this I think.
16:58Well, all, I've got way too
17:00many thank yous anyway,
17:01so we're getting this done.
17:04This is my first in person talk
17:05since my books been published,
17:06so I need to express a lot of
17:09gratitude for being invited by
17:10Anna Reisman and John Warner to
17:12the program in Humanities and in
17:15medicine in the section of the
17:17history of medicine for sponsoring.
17:19It's also particularly an honor
17:21to be here in this room full of
17:23so many scholars I deeply admire.
17:24This book couldn't have been written
17:27without John Warner's groundbreaking work.
17:30I also want to acknowledge Naomi Rogers,
17:33who has been a really generous
17:35supporter since I met her at the Upenn
17:37Archives as a third year grad student.
17:40And she came up and said,
17:41what are you doing with these dissertations?
17:44So Sean, as you know,
17:46we edited a book together.
17:48Liana and I go actually way back.
17:50And Carolyn and I have also
17:52worked together much,
17:52and I'm very excited to be in
17:55conversation with my new colleague,
17:56Chinya Jelly.
17:59So it's an honor to be here and
18:01thank you all for coming out tonight.
18:03I know the weather was not so
18:05welcoming and I also should
18:06give a quick content warning.
18:08My talking gauge is, unsurprisingly,
18:10with themes of medical racism,
18:12but also suicide and includes images
18:15of spaces with human remains.
18:17Some quotes also contain dated
18:20racial terminology.
18:21So with that said,
18:23I'm glad to be here talking to you tonight.
18:26Ah,
18:27there we go.
18:30So I'll do so first by discussing
18:33an individual story of how medical
18:35professionals embrace a racial science
18:38affected diverse individual lives.
18:39The story acts as a segue to describing
18:42the book's larger argument about how
18:44medical schools became the central
18:46site for the dissemination of bio
18:48determinist racial science in the last
18:50decades of chattel slavery in the US.
18:54Finally, for most of my talk,
18:55I'm going to focus.
18:57On how race was actually taught
18:59in the medical school,
19:00examining a pedagogy that asserted that
19:04anatomical racial differences were real.
19:06And that they could be used to organize
19:08the United States into racial hierarchies.
19:11And I also consider the reception and
19:14legacy of this pedagogy through analysis
19:16of medical student dissertations.
19:19But I want to begin, though,
19:20by telling you the history of
19:22storman as a window into the intimate
19:25effects of antebellum racial science.
19:27On an individual life.
19:30Stormont was born in Little Demaco
19:32land which is near the border of
19:34contemporary South Africa and Namibia,
19:36and on the map on the screen you
19:39can actually see where little
19:41Namaqualand is located on the Atlantic
19:43Coast of South Africa.
19:45By the time you arrived in Boston in 1860,
19:48he was approximately 16 years old.
19:51Already he had experienced a chaotic life.
19:53Dispossessed of grazing lands,
19:55as a child his family hunted and gathered for
19:59food in the shadows of Dutch settlements.
20:02As a teenager,
20:03Stormont trekked himself more than 1000 miles
20:06to the coastal Indian Ocean City of Natal.
20:08After working as a guide
20:10for white hunting parties,
20:11storm on weight made one
20:13more desperate decision.
20:15He came to Boston in search of
20:17a better life. Instead,
20:19he ended up in a PT Barnum exhibit
20:21at the city's Aquarial Gardens,
20:23on display with four other
20:25men from Southern Africa.
20:26And you can see a broadside
20:28here which depicts him.
20:32Stormont was forced to portray
20:34stereotypes of African indigeneity.
20:36Every day he had to perform what exhibitors
20:39called the war and Love Dances while
20:41holding objects like clubs and Spears.
20:43In less than a year,
20:44Stormont hanged himself.
20:46The story sent shockwaves through the
20:48Boston press only six months earlier.
20:51Newspapers were attempting
20:52to justify the exhibit.
20:54Exclaiming that the arrangement between the
20:56promoters and the South African Government,
20:59or British Government and South Africa
21:01was nothing like the slave trade,
21:03this was a particularly awkward time for
21:06Bostonians to be trafficking in Africans.
21:08The secession crisis began
21:10just months after the exhibit,
21:11and the city was the center of
21:14the American abolition movement.
21:15Left out of newspapers was how Stormonts
21:18body was given to Harvard Medical School,
21:21where they turned his remains
21:23into teaching tools and supposed
21:25evidence of racial difference.
21:27It's critical, though,
21:28to understand that stormonts tragic suicide
21:30may not have been just a case of desperation.
21:32He likely believed in an afterlife.
21:35Many African religions,
21:36as well as syncretic forms of Christianity,
21:39did not see suicide as immoral.
21:42Thus.
21:42Storm on suicide may have been one more
21:45attempt to wrest control over his existence,
21:48whether in the name of escape,
21:49rebellion,
21:50or a pursuit of a better afterlife.
21:53More broadly,
21:54though,
21:55his history reminds us of the
21:57profound cost of creating and
21:59disseminating racial theories.
22:0119th century medical students learned
22:03supposed racial differences on
22:05the bodies of people like storman,
22:07scientists at Harvard measured
22:09and made casts of his remains.
22:11He was an unwilling participant in the
22:14production of 19th century racial science.
22:16Moreover,
22:17collections of people's remains brought
22:20prestige and scientific legitimacy to
22:22the to medicine and the allied sciences.
22:25His life is as much a part of this
22:28history as are the accounts I will
22:30give of antebellum faculty like
22:32Joseph Liddy of the University of
22:34Pennsylvania or Oliver Wendell
22:36Holmes of Harvard.
22:37Masters of Health then captures
22:39Titanic shifts in the history
22:40of American Medical education,
22:42spanning from only one medical
22:44school in 1765 to over 50 at the
22:47start of the Civil War.
22:49During this period,
22:50physicians like like Declaration
22:52of Independence, signer Penn,
22:54Professor, abolitionist,
22:56and racial theorist Benjamin
22:58Rush could truly believe that
23:00chattel slavery was in decline.
23:03This was, of course,
23:04prior to Eli Whitney's invention of
23:06the modern cotton gin the 1790s.
23:07After that,
23:08slavery began to expand again
23:11geographically in the newly
23:13formed United States.
23:15Yet by this point,
23:16the United States also had an
23:18active abolitionist movement.
23:20Thus,
23:20US medical schools were profoundly
23:22shaped by developing during a century
23:25of national and Atlantic debates
23:27over the abolition of slavery,
23:29beginning with 18th century
23:32colonial abolition initiatives.
23:34My argument is threefold.
23:371st.
23:38As white physicians faced a
23:39crisis of public confidence in the
23:41first half of the 19th century,
23:43doctors embraced medical schools and
23:45bio determinist racial theories as a
23:48means to establish their sole legitimacy
23:50in a competitive healing marketplace.
23:53Thus, I argue that racial thinking quite
23:56literally underwrote the professionalization
23:57of medicine in the United States.
24:00Second, the proliferation of medical
24:03schools allowed physicians to lay claim
24:06to being a national profession with a
24:09shared ideology instead of practices.
24:11By the end of the antebellum era,
24:13a whole generation of physicians
24:15emerged that were trained to see
24:17racial groups as defined by imagined
24:20anatomical and physiological differences.
24:23Racial groups, students learned,
24:24were also suited to and healthy
24:27in specific environments.
24:29Thus, faculty could argue that racial
24:32difference was anatomically ordained.
24:33And that plantation labor in the
24:36southern subtropics was uniquely
24:37healthy for people of African descent.
24:433rd and finally unpacking the life
24:45stories of people like Storman,
24:47whose skulls were displayed at Harvard,
24:50reveals that US racial medicine can
24:52only be completely understood through
24:54a transnational lens that captures
24:56the breadth of the African diaspora.
24:59Even before slavery was abolished,
25:01medical racial theories were
25:03connected to and being applied to
25:05the potential colonization of Cuba,
25:07Liberia and other parts of
25:10the global tropics.
25:11Thus, I argue that medical schools
25:13were the central site for the
25:15dissemination of racial science in the
25:16United States before the Civil war.
25:18In revealing how,
25:19early American physicians created
25:21a culture of racial theorizing.
25:23I analyzed the relationship between
25:25schools and diverse black communities
25:27in the United States and abroad,
25:29from New York City to South Africa.
25:32No.
25:35Here I wish to note some relevant
25:36context about the history of racial
25:38science and medical schools as frankly
25:40essential to understanding this history.
25:421st. Compared to the 18th century,
25:46where US medical schools only granted
25:48a little more than 200 MD's in total.
25:51Close to 30,000 were granted
25:54from 1840 to 1859.
25:56During this period,
25:57schools were founded in significant
26:00numbers in the Northeast SE and Midwest.
26:052nd. Few black people were admitted
26:08to medical schools during this period.
26:10James Mccune Smith,
26:11pictured on the slide above,
26:14was the first American African
26:15American to receive an MD,
26:17yet he had to attend medical
26:19school in Glasgow.
26:20Samuel F McGill,
26:21on the other hand,
26:22had emigrated to Liberia as a
26:24child before returning to attend
26:25medical school in Dartmouth.
26:30Early state medical licensing also
26:33actively excluded black practitioners.
26:353rd during the 1840s American race,
26:39American scientists increasingly
26:40embraced the theory of polygenesis,
26:43the notion that each race was created
26:45by God for separate environments,
26:48correlating, generally speaking,
26:50to different continents.
26:52During this period,
26:54Polygenesis briefly supplanted Monogenesis
26:56among scientists in the Christian world.
27:00Naturalists have long contended that
27:02all humans derive from one single pair,
27:05IE Adam and Eve, and this was monogenesis.
27:08After the Darwinian Revolution began in 1859,
27:11though, the supposed anatomical racial
27:14traits outlined by Polygenists had
27:16continued violence in American medicine.
27:194th.
27:20Antebellum medical student dissertations.
27:23A key piece of evidence.
27:24We're not akin to modern dissertations
27:27that emphasize original research.
27:28Rather,
27:29they were derivative and reflected what
27:31a student learned about mainstream
27:33ideas on a specific medical topic.
27:36Many were plagiarized,
27:37and one medical professor in the 1870s
27:40even suggested a ritual burning of them
27:43every year to celebrate the 4th of July.
27:46The point being,
27:48dissertations reflected medical pedagogy,
27:50not original scholarship.
27:52Therefore,
27:53they're particularly useful,
27:55as we'll see,
27:56for studying the history
27:57of medical education.
28:02In early American Medical schools,
28:04faculty discussing race directed
28:05much of their attention to anatomy,
28:08dissection and human remains.
28:09And here we can see above a crude
28:13illustration of a dissection demonstration
28:15at the University of Pennsylvania.
28:18For example.
28:19Antebellum racial scientist and
28:21medical professor Samuel Morton
28:23included racial skull measurements
28:25in the anatomy textbook, he wrote.
28:27So, too did Penn faculty like William
28:30Horner and his successor, Joseph Lyddy.
28:33Lectures illustrated this further.
28:35Faculty like Lyddy or Oliver Wendell Holmes,
28:38senior at Harvard,
28:40describes supposed anatomical
28:42differences across the body.
28:45In his anatomy lectures at
28:46Penn from 1853 to 1891,
28:48Joseph Lyddy taught students that supposed
28:51racial about taught students about
28:53supposed racial differences in the cranium,
28:57going into depth on facial
28:59angles and cranial capacity.
29:01Lydia told his students that there
29:03were more significant anatomical
29:05differences between lions and
29:07tigers than black and white people.
29:09Yet, he claimed,
29:10no naturalist said that these
29:12felines were separate, were the same.
29:15Species.
29:17Specifically, why D demarcated numerous
29:20supposed anatomical characteristics
29:22peculiar to African descendants bodies,
29:25including narrower pelvises,
29:27longer limbs in relation to the body,
29:30longer foot, shorter toes, shorter neck,
29:34smaller and longer heel bone,
29:36and no arch in the foot.
29:38To his students, Lydy depicted
29:41African descendants as diverging from
29:44whites literally from head to toe.
29:46These small differences were
29:48negligible on their own,
29:49lighty contended.
29:50But when combined,
29:52they defined African descendants
29:53as an entirely distinct species.
29:58Methodologically speaking,
29:59lecturers employed a visual style to
30:02teach these supposed differences that
30:04blended oral content with demonstration.
30:07And here we can see this is an
30:09image of an anatomical theater
30:11in London during the same period.
30:13Visual and tactile instruction were
30:15meant to make medical and supposed racial
30:18knowledge easy to retain and empirical.
30:21That's a critical part in the
30:24introductory lecture to his first
30:26session at Harvard in 1847.
30:27Oliver Wendell Holmes plainly explained
30:29that his lectures would be highly visual,
30:32whether they be on race or any other subject.
30:36In fact, his motto was illustration.
30:39He told his students that anatomy
30:41was an inherently optical discipline,
30:43and in most respects,
30:44students learned more from visuals
30:46than rhetoric.
30:47Holmes, first point of importance here, then.
30:49Is that anatomical lectures with
30:52a visual component allowed for
30:54greater retention.
30:55He believed that students could understand
30:57and retain information better about the
31:00human body when it was transmitted.
31:01Through this rhetorical,
31:03visual and tactile instruction.
31:05Holmes also argued that the second
31:07power of a visually oriented anatomical
31:10lecture resided in observations
31:13ability to render anatomical
31:15knowledge objectively real.
31:17As Holmes explained,
31:18I have attempted therefore to
31:20render visible everything which
31:22the eye could take cognizance of,
31:24and so turn abstractions and
31:26catalogs of names into substantial
31:28and objective realities.
31:30Holmes used images,
31:31models and anatomical specimens as a part
31:34of a larger pedagogical approach to anatomy.
31:37Essential to his lectures about
31:39racial difference were the images
31:41that surrounded him as he explained
31:44whites supposed anatomical superiority.
31:45And in this image you can actually
31:48see a hanging skeleton pictures,
31:50hand drawn images of skulls and heads.
31:53So we don't know what their lecturing about,
31:55but it very well could have
31:58been racial difference actually.
32:00He even contacted Polygenist in
32:02Harvard colleague Louis Agassiz for
32:04works from his private collection
32:07Holmes commissioned in large artistic
32:09reproductions of figures from prominent
32:12racial science texts like Harvard
32:14Medical School Grad Charles Pickerings,
32:16the races of man.
32:18Most visuals and pickerings
32:19monograph were sketches of people
32:21that he encountered during the
32:23United States exploring expeditions
32:25circumnavigation of the globe,
32:27which lasted from 1838 to 18.
32:3042 and a little sidebar here.
32:32That book is also one of the first
32:35publications by the Smithsonian,
32:36and it's a pro polygenesis book.
32:42Building on visuals,
32:43lectures also had tactile components.
32:45Anatomical objects were passed
32:47around the room, for example.
32:49Skulls were displayed.
32:51Holmes even instructed students in the
32:53specific methods of measuring crania
32:55and how to use a cranial ometer.
32:56And that's an illustration of
32:59Samuel Morton's craniometry.
33:01Both Lydia and Holmes teaching careers
33:03spanned the antebellum and post bellum eras.
33:06In short, the racial theories
33:08taught in the antebellum medical
33:10school had an enduring,
33:11rather than fleeting effect.
33:17Students also wrote about anatomical
33:19difference in their senior theses
33:21hailing from South Alabama.
33:23When Jay Ramsey McDowell arrived
33:25in Philadelphia in the 1850s,
33:27he was certainly well versed
33:29in the white racist thought
33:31pervading Alabama's black belt.
33:33His 1857 thesis, though,
33:35displayed the medicalization of
33:37this racial worldview and the
33:39specific influence of his professor,
33:41Joseph Lyddy. For example,
33:43McDowell was one of several students who,
33:46in their theses,
33:48paraphrased liedy,
33:49telling the class that black and
33:51white people were anatomically more
33:53different than lions and tigers.
33:55As well as learning about racial
33:57science and a bustling northern
33:58metropolis through medical education,
34:01McDowell was Privy to a broader
34:03set of influences.
34:04In his thesis,
34:05he cited Louis Agassiz,
34:07the same Harvard Polygenist,
34:08along with deceased European luminaries
34:10and comparative anatomists like Georges.
34:13Duvier and Petrus camper.
34:15Camper invented a method for
34:18measuring facial angles.
34:19Education expanded Mcdowell's
34:21worldview and social network.
34:23Comprised of half Southern students,
34:26schools like the University of
34:28Pennsylvania brought together white male
34:30youth from across the Mason Dixon Line.
34:32Together,
34:33these students extended their
34:35knowledge beyond the parochial racism
34:37of southern plantations and instead
34:39embraced a cosmopolitan racial
34:41science that was being disseminated.
34:43From cities around the Atlantic world.
34:46In short,
34:47students learned about anatomical
34:49racial difference 1st through textbooks,
34:52then through lectures that promoted
34:54something akin to active learning,
34:56and finally,
34:56some students wrote about racial
34:58difference in their senior theses.
35:02Unsurprisingly, Polygenesis ideas were
35:04rife with internal contradictions.
35:07Frederick Douglass pointed out many
35:08of these shortcomings in a speech
35:10at Western Reserve College in 1854.
35:13For example, pioneering cranial ologist and
35:16anatomy professor Samuel Morton routinely
35:19fetishized Egyptians as the progenitors
35:21of so-called Western civilization.
35:23As Douglas noted, though,
35:25about Morton's descriptions of Egyptians.
35:28They would have been considered black
35:29and unsavable on Morton's own terms.
35:32Douglas asserted a man in our
35:34day with brown complexion,
35:35and here he's quoting Morton's
35:37nose rounded and wide lips thick,
35:40hair black and curly.
35:41And back to Douglas would, I think,
35:44have no difficulty in getting
35:45himself recognized as a *****.
35:50Sadly, a bloody civil war and the triumph of
35:54emancipation did not lead to the abolition
35:56of racist medical school curricula.
35:59In his 1874 thesis at the
36:01University of Pennsylvania,
36:02Student and Philadelphia native
36:05Hollingsworth Neal wrote about the
36:07anatomical peculiarities of black people.
36:10While the nation had abolished slavery
36:12and Darwinists had mostly usurped
36:14polygenists and scientific circles,
36:17Neil's thesis closely resembled
36:19antebellum theses on racial anatomy.
36:22In familiar fashion,
36:23he argued that black people had
36:25longer forearms and narrower pelvises.
36:27Neal cited his experiences dissecting
36:29black people's bodies and measuring
36:32their skulls as a basis for his
36:34assertions of white superiority.
36:35He explained the frontal bones of the skull,
36:38besides having a smaller cranial
36:40capacity and a receding direction,
36:42have also larger supraorbital protuberances,
36:46very suggestive of the formation
36:48in the gorilla.
36:49While historians have treated the
36:51civil War as a significant turning
36:53point in the history of medicine.
36:54Neal illustrated that in terms of
36:57racial anatomy. Not enough had changed.
37:03These are just a few examples from my book,
37:05which illustrates how early American
37:07Medical schools helped enshrine the use
37:09of racial categories and medical practice.
37:12A focus on institutional racism allows us
37:14to unpack how these ideas persisted well
37:17after the deaths of their original authors.
37:21Ivy League anatomy faculty like
37:23Holmes and Lydy taught for more years
37:26after the Civil War than before.
37:28Moreover, we know that the Darwinian
37:30revolution did not change the way they
37:33described racial and anatomical differences.
37:35It's worth noting that Lady was one
37:36of the first American converts,
37:38prominent American converts to
37:40Darwinian evolution.
37:41Thus Polygenesis lived on,
37:43and how physicians were trained
37:44to see black people's bodies as
37:47anatomically distinct,
37:48even as they believed natural selection,
37:50not God,
37:51was responsible for these differences.
37:54Likewise,
37:54in the wake of this new racial medicine,
37:57physicians could claim that it
37:59was black people's bodies.
38:01Not their poor treatment on plantations
38:03or poverty in the north that cause
38:06them to have disparate health outcomes.
38:09In short,
38:10in Masters of Health,
38:11I argued that this institutionalization
38:13of racial thought in early America
38:16has helped justify the persistence
38:18of health disparities across profound
38:20ideological and political changes in U.S.
38:22history.
38:23During their earliest attempts
38:25at professionalization,
38:27medical faculty created and disseminated
38:29racial theories that claimed biological,
38:32not social,
38:33determinants or responsible
38:35for health disparities.
38:37Thank you so much,
38:37and I look forward to the discussion.
38:59OK, everyone hear me. Well,
39:03thank you for this talk, Chris,
39:05and the impressive book that it's based on.
39:07I know I'm going to be coming back to this
39:09one many times about the following years.
39:12So as John mentioned,
39:13I'm one of the postdoctoral researchers
39:15for the Y Simon Slavery project.
39:18And so tonight what I want to do is consider
39:20how Chris's narrative can be applied
39:22to the history of Yale Medical School.
39:25To do that, I want us to think about
39:27how racial science may have shaped
39:29the materiality of medical education,
39:31especially the process of acquiring.
39:33Bodies for dissection and whose
39:34bodies were used in dissection.
39:37This is something Chris details
39:38extensively in his book,
39:39and it's also something that we're
39:40learning more about in our research.
39:43So one example of this
39:44comes from a letter that one Yale
39:46medical student sent to another Yale
39:48medical student in the winter of 1836.
39:51Now for the non historians in the audience,
39:53it is really important that this
39:55source is personal correspondence,
39:56which was actually one of the most private
39:58forms of writing in the 19th century,
40:00even more private than Diaries
40:02which were sometimes shared in
40:04social circles and published.
40:06And this correspondence was
40:07also between two close friends,
40:09so they talked about things
40:10that they definitely would not
40:11talk about in other settings,
40:13including, it seems,
40:15a clandestine incident of body snatching.
40:18The author of the letter recounts
40:19how he and several other medical
40:20students stole the body of a black
40:22sailor who had been stabbed a few
40:24days prior and had died that morning.
40:27The student doesn't give this man a
40:29name or seem to know who stabbed him.
40:31There is no indication of how
40:34the medical students found
40:33out about this man's death, but
40:35it is clear that once they did,
40:36they acted fast.
40:37The student explains that they
40:39carried the body to the college
40:40against the consent of what he
40:42calls a number of the lower
40:43orders of society. Who
40:45saw what the students were doing,
40:47objected to it immediately,
40:48and then followed them back to the college.
40:51This rabble, again using
40:53the medical students words,
40:54may have been the Saylor's friends,
40:57his community in New Haven,
40:59or perhaps just bystanders who are
41:00abhorred by what they were seeing.
41:03We don't know for sure,
41:04but we do know that there were
41:05witnesses and they were angry,
41:06to say the very least.
41:09The student goes on to describe what
41:10they did with this man's body once
41:12they got back to the medical school.
41:13He writes that quote.
41:14We carried him into the cellar of the
41:17college and threw a rope around him.
41:18The mob,
41:19seeing this with no small degree of anxiety,
41:21inquired why that was done.
41:23The answer they got was only to
41:25prevent him from getting away.
41:26End Quote.
41:28The rope he's talking about was
41:29part of a suspension system that
41:31was used to hoist the body,
41:33the body of the sailor from the
41:35cellar up into the anatomical
41:37room directly above it.
41:38Again,
41:38this was all done in front of onlookers.
41:41The medical student explains that once
41:42the sailor's body was hoisted up, he was,
41:44quote, safe and out of their reach.
41:46And that day he lay on
41:48the demonstration table.
41:49The rabble left the college
41:50with murmurings of threats
41:51and blasphemy and quote.
41:54So the student
41:55admits that this whole incident
41:57may have caused a bigger fuss.
41:59But he says that because the sailor
42:00had no relation to the college,
42:02they were able to get away with it
42:04and eventually complete a dissection.
42:06He says that this man's body was,
42:08quote one of the best subjects
42:09to ever lay on the anatomical
42:11table in this institution. Quote.
42:13And it turns out this sailor's
42:15body was just one of several being
42:17held at the college that winter.
42:18The medical student ends the
42:20letter by telling his friend that
42:21there are five subjects currently
42:23laying in the dissecting room,
42:24but students and faculty had not experienced,
42:26quote, any inconvenience for
42:28the security of those subjects.
42:29UN quote.
42:32So.
42:34What strikes me,
42:35I guess 1st about this letter is the
42:37casual tone of such a violent act.
42:39And the second thing is it made me
42:42think of Chris's analysis of the
42:44Racial Critical Clinical detachment
42:46that physicians developed through
42:48teaching and learning and practicing
42:50racial silence for a racial science.
42:52More specifically,
42:53I think this episode captures how that
42:55gaze shaped and was shaped by the social
42:58and cultural dimensions of dissection.
43:01Here we have what seems to be an
43:03opportunistic theft of a sailor's body.
43:05We know that a sailor would have been
43:07someone who was lower socioeconomic status,
43:10definitely more so than medical students,
43:12in addition to being a black person.
43:15And we also see an immediate
43:16reaction from the community,
43:17similar to the communities that
43:19Chris actually identified in his
43:20book in New York and Philadelphia,
43:22who did resist this kind
43:23of medical exploitation?
43:27And finally, we have a description of body
43:29capture and display that I think perfectly
43:31encapsulates what Chris calls the white
43:34supremacist spectacle of medical education
43:36and anatomical education specifically.
43:39Not only is a black man's body literally
43:41strung up in the medical school in front of a
43:43public audience and against their protests,
43:45but the student writing this letter
43:47clearly believes that he and other
43:48medical students had a right to do this.
43:50He views the witnesses as
43:52little more than annoyance,
43:53whom he only acknowledges to make sure
43:55that they're staying away from the body.
43:57He also says that the people
43:59who complain about the theft of
44:01bodies are just inconveniences.
44:02Basically,
44:02he displays no inclination to consider
44:05the humanity of his so-called subjects.
44:07This man included the sailor,
44:10just what they can do for them,
44:11him as a white medical student.
44:14So I'll
44:15leave it there. Look forward to hearing
44:16what my fellow commentators will say.
44:24Good evening everyone. Umm, like Lianna,
44:28I'm one of the researchers looking at
44:31the Yale schools and School of Medicines
44:35Historical connections with slavery.
44:39And I want to similarly
44:41situate what we're looking at
44:43in terms of Chris's research.
44:46And I've known Chris actually
44:47for quite a few years now,
44:49I think probably about 7:00.
44:51And I have to say
44:53as much as we've talked, we've
44:54had dozens of conversations about his work,
44:56my work, other things in the
44:57history of slavery, medicine.
44:58I was really excited to read this book,
45:00and even more excited when I realized
45:03how much there was for me to learn,
45:05even despite all of our
45:07conversations over all these years.
45:11And. Among other things I think Chris's
45:15book does really well is it shows
45:17the international and interregional
45:20connections within the United States of
45:24medical practice the way that a lot of us,
45:28his medical professors and other
45:30writers are consciously thinking about
45:33international forms of medical education,
45:37especially what sort of the French
45:39models which were at in this
45:41period in the 19th century like.
45:43Three models of medical education.
45:48And I also have to say like his
45:51his use of MD theses may seem.
45:53Obvious it may be like, ohh, yeah,
45:55he's reading this document that exists,
45:57and of course they exist.
45:58But what's really smart about his use
46:00of theses is that it's showing not
46:03just that an idea was transmitted,
46:04but that it was picked up and repeated,
46:07right? And a lot of times when
46:09we do intellectual history,
46:10it's really easy to demonstrate
46:11that somebody wrote an idea.
46:13It's really hard to see who read it,
46:16who repeated it, and who thought about it.
46:18And so by by doing this model,
46:21he's or he's analyzing both medical lectures.
46:24As well as textbooks and then comparing
46:26how that comes out in the MD theses.
46:29It really does a good job of
46:31showing what people are learning
46:33in this medical education.
46:36And so. A lot of
46:38what I've done during my time here
46:40at Yale is to look at a lot of
46:43these sources that Chris mentioned,
46:44to look at the lecture notes we have
46:47from students and medical professors
46:49about what was actually being taught.
46:53And then also again to look at the MD
46:56Theses that students wrote to see,
46:58you know, again like Chris is doing
47:01sort of what they learned. And.
47:05I'm going to focus a little bit
47:06on the differences between what
47:07I've seen here at Yale compared
47:09to to what Chris has identified.
47:11But I would say in general it's
47:12in the same ballpark, right?
47:14Yo, was not a school that
47:16that Chris really examined.
47:17But you see a lot of the same patterns.
47:20What I mean by that is in the medical
47:25lectures. There are repeated.
47:28But very sparse mentioned about race,
47:32about diseases being connected
47:35with different populations,
47:37especially in hot climates,
47:40which is basically a euphemism
47:41for places that have slavery.
47:45Umm. And. And it it what's striking is
47:50that this shows up in in virtually.
47:54Every set of lecture notes for
47:56a professor at some point.
47:58But these kinds of references are often
48:00mentioned with all with almost no
48:02supporting evidence, which to me says.
48:05These are such widely held ideas and beliefs
48:08that they don't really have to be proven,
48:09they just have to be mentioned.
48:12And then, you know, the medical student,
48:13the audience sort of knows what that means.
48:18And also say that.
48:21A lot of Chris's focus is on
48:23the anatomy lectures right,
48:24because these these are the areas
48:26where you can really see racial
48:28science and and it's traditionally
48:30been located in terms of the
48:32measurements of facial angles.
48:34So Chris mentioned or bones,
48:36things like that.
48:38But it's also striking to me in the in this,
48:42in this way, that I've described how
48:43how these racial ideas just pop up.
48:46In fields you wouldn't expect,
48:48and I would say probably the most
48:51distinct example of that that I
48:53saw reading lectures here at the
48:55university was in a lecture that
48:58was essentially about chemistry.
49:00Not bodies,
49:01and in fact this lecture was about color
49:04and the way that color and heat connect.
49:07Particularly the idea that if you leave
49:08something of a darker color out in the sun,
49:10it gets hotter. And.
49:14Near the end of this lecture,
49:16there's sort of a set of
49:17rhetorical questions about look,
49:18doesn't this explain all these little things?
49:20And one of them is why
49:25people described as *****.
49:28That their darker skin allows them to
49:30work better in these hot climates, right?
49:32And this isn't a lecture.
49:33Again, it's chemistry.
49:34It's about color.
49:36It's in theory,
49:36not about bodies at all.
49:37And yet there's this one rhetorical
49:39question thrown in a list of about 5 or 10.
49:42That references race and
49:44the importance of color.
49:45And that obliquely references slavery,
49:48right?
49:48And this idea that you need people
49:51from Africa to work in places like
49:53the American S because effectively
49:55white people can't do that.
49:56And this is a widely held idea at this time.
50:02And also say this is something
50:03we haven't done yet, but but that
50:05Chris's book is directly inspiring
50:07is we need to do the research to
50:09look at what textbooks are being
50:11shared at Yale and what whether or
50:13not they have racial ideas as well.
50:15And we have lists of textbooks,
50:16but we haven't actually opened them up yet,
50:18and I tracked them down.
50:20The first thing I'm definitely
50:21going to do is look at Chris's
50:22footnotes and see which
50:23of these books he's already identified.
50:27Um. And since I think I've
50:29probably used most of my time,
50:30I I will say one other thing that I
50:34found really great about Chris's book
50:35and also his presentation that we've
50:37also have a sense of here at Yale and
50:41that is students are traveling well
50:43most well most of this medical students
50:46are relatively local from Connecticut.
50:51Sort of Northeastern New York,
50:53you know, Western Massachusetts,
50:55Long Island, even.
50:57There are also significant clusters
51:00of medical students coming from
51:02the US S places like Mississippi.
51:05But also West Indian Islands and even
51:08Brazil that we don't know why they
51:10would choose necessarily to come to
51:13Connecticut for medical education.
51:15But it definitely suggests that these
51:18these people coming from deep slave
51:22societies whose medical education
51:23is almost certainly being funded
51:25by their connection to slavery,
51:27are coming to places like Connecticut,
51:29really shows this, this, this network,
51:32this international network of
51:33students and medical knowledge that
51:35I think is crucial to Chris.
51:37So I'll stop there.
51:38Thank you.
51:42Hi everyone. My name is Tina.
51:44I'm a medical student.
51:46Can you guys hear me OK? Fantastic.
51:48So I should start by saying
51:50that I am not a historian of
51:53slavery or of medical education.
51:55So when I was asked to be on this panel,
51:58I assumed that I was asked to
51:59be on the panel because I'm
52:00currently a Med student,
52:01so I can speak to the legacy of
52:04slavery and biological racism in
52:06the Med school curriculum today.
52:10So I was struggling to figure
52:13out of the many experiences I've
52:16had and the stories I've heard,
52:18what can I share in 5 minutes?
52:21So I'm going to give you a couple
52:23of anecdotes and then I'm going
52:25to touch on an anatomy class
52:26in cadavers or as we call them,
52:28donors and because that's something that
52:31Chris talks about in depth in his book.
52:35So my first anecdote has to do
52:37with a lecture that was one of
52:39the last lectures we had in 2020
52:40before the COVID pandemic.
52:42So it was in person,
52:43and it was a lecture given by a premier
52:47pulmonologist at the school who was,
52:49and who undoubtedly went on to be part of
52:51the Yale response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
52:56Long story short,
52:57she said that on average,
52:59black people have smaller lungs and
53:02smaller lung capacity than white people.
53:05After class,
53:05I walked up to her at the podium.
53:09I'm kind of distraught.
53:11And I said,
53:12I mean if the data actually
53:14bears this out that black people
53:17have similar lung capacity.
53:19How do we know that there isn't
53:21some sort of confounding factor
53:23like some other meddling factor?
53:26For example,
53:27maybe because of segregation and
53:30housing in the United States,
53:32black people live in places
53:34with pollution and so it affects
53:37their lung health.
53:38If that's true,
53:39wouldn't that mean that we are
53:41missing people who are sick
53:43and need treatment from us?
53:44And isn't that bad?
53:46And she said that would be
53:47terrible if it were true.
53:49But um,
53:50our understanding is black people
53:54do better at a certain lung
53:58capacity than white people do.
54:00So basically they're fine with
54:02the smaller lung capacity.
54:04Umm.
54:05Needless to say,
54:06after doing some of my own research later on,
54:09I found that there's very
54:11there's no evidence for that.
54:13There's no good evidence for any of the
54:15claims that she made in front of class.
54:18And was so interesting to hear
54:19my colleagues say that a lot of
54:21these claims are made to these Med
54:22students without much elaboration,
54:24because that's my experience
54:25in 2019 up until now.
54:27The claims are made with no
54:30elaboration unless you ask for it,
54:32and even then not a lot of
54:34good data is presented.
54:36A lot of these.
54:38A lot of these studies that people
54:41cite in making these claims
54:42are review articles of review
54:44articles of review articles of
54:46studies that were done in the
54:48late 1800s or the early 1900s.
54:53With very small sample sizes and
54:55we're simply just not rigorous,
54:57but you'll find them in current resources
54:59for doctors and medical students today,
55:02including up to date,
55:04which is basically Google.
55:05For doctors,
55:06it's supposed to be evidence based.
55:11So. I've got an another anecdote from
55:15my time doing a rotation on the wards.
55:18So I was doing an anesthesia rotation
55:21and it was my day in OB GYN anesthesia.
55:25So basically anesthesia
55:27for people giving birth.
55:28I was super excited about it and I was
55:31working with a black female resident
55:33and she was the only black resident
55:35that I met on my anesthesia rotation
55:38on the entire time and we were working
55:40with a older white attending attending.
55:43The doctor in charge.
55:46And he told us that based on
55:47his own anecdotal evidence,
55:49working with hundreds of patients,
55:51he believed that black people's
55:53spines were deeper in their backs
55:56than white peoples or Asian peoples.
55:59Um, and this is relevant because when
56:01you're installing an epidural to give
56:03anesthesia for someone giving birth,
56:05you have to hit a particular spot in
56:08their back to make sure you're delivering
56:10the anesthesia to the right place?
56:13So he told this to the resident,
56:15and to my astonishment,
56:17it seemed like she believed it.
56:20And eventually we went in to see
56:23an Asian American patient who
56:25was really gracious in letting us
56:27work with her as trainees.
56:32And it was the residents
56:33turn to do the epidural.
56:35I think she'd done one or two before,
56:37and so she attempted.
56:38She gave it maybe two or three
56:41tries and she did not succeed.
56:42And the attending had to step
56:44in and place the epidural.
56:45So it took something that should
56:47have taken maybe 10 minutes,
56:49ended up taking around 30.
56:51I'm sure that was uncomfortable for her,
56:54and I'll never forget what the resident
56:55said as we were leaving the room,
56:57which was her spine was deeper
56:58in her back than I expected.
57:04Lastly, I'm going to talk about the cadavers
57:06that we use for anatomy class at Yale.
57:09We refer to them as donors,
57:12and that comes from the idea that they
57:15willingly donated their bodies for us to
57:17use in class before we start anatomy class.
57:21They give us a short presentation
57:23that is kind of anonymized,
57:25but it tells us a little bit about the people
57:29who donated their bodies for us to use.
57:32It gives us a I think the age that they
57:35were when they died and their occupation
57:37and I think their gender as well.
57:40A lot of them were homemakers
57:42or a white collar workers.
57:44And when I got to class I discovered
57:47that virtually all of the donors
57:49were white except for one.
57:51And this was in 2020 when I
57:53was taking this anatomy class.
57:57And I thought. Maybe it's a good thing
58:01that most of the donors are white,
58:04based on the history that I've heard here,
58:07based on the history.
58:08That I learned from Doctor Warner
58:10and his history of medicine.
58:12Lectures about body snatchers,
58:14people using the bodies of
58:18enslaved people for anatomy,
58:20hanging them up in a by a rope like a noose.
58:26I don't. Even to this day,
58:27I don't think I would donate my body
58:29to be used in an anatomy class.
58:31I I am an organ donor,
58:33but I don't think I would
58:34give it up for that purpose.
58:36And this is only tangentially related.
58:38But I'll it was kind of chilling for
58:40me to hear the students who were
58:43working on that particular donors
58:44body complain about the amount of fat
58:46tissue they had to cut through to get
58:49to the thorax and to look at the lungs.
58:52I was like even in death,
58:54you can't fit the beauty standard.
58:56Umm. So that was really tough.
58:58I think I might have gone over my time and
59:00there's so much more I could have said,
59:02but I hope everyone asks
59:04whatever questions they have.
59:08Thank you so much to each of you for.
59:14I think. Can you hear me?
59:16Yeah. Thank you so much for.
59:19All of these reflect and.
59:22You know one of the things
59:25I would love to do.
59:27Because of this material.
59:28Hearing about this history.
59:34It's difficult to see the connection.
59:38So clearly and so strongly.
59:41And the impact of that house on
59:44current medications and all the people
59:46doing this saying that this thing
59:48sounds fun with all of these sports.
59:50The real cost to that kind of work,
59:53and there's kind of emotional labor
59:55that goes into the right space.
59:59And So what I'd like to do
01:00:02is to is to stay with China.
01:00:05And I would love to hear
01:00:09you speak about you develop.
01:00:12To oh, is this better? Oh, OK. Is this on?
01:00:18Yes OK do I need to repeat anything? Umm.
01:00:25Any ideas? OK, wonderful.
01:00:29And So what? I want to start with
01:00:32Genia because you have worked to
01:00:35create a different kind of curricula.
01:00:38That takes on biological racism that
01:00:40is mandatory in the medical school for
01:00:44the for the first years, I believe.
01:00:46I'd love to hear you speak about that.
01:00:49And I love also for for Chris and
01:00:52Leanna and Sean to reflect on what you
01:00:55describe about the changes that you're
01:00:58making in terms of how medicine is
01:01:01being taught and connect that with the
01:01:04histories that you've been studying,
01:01:06what kinds of shifts.
01:01:08Are you hearing from China when
01:01:10she is talking about this?
01:01:12What are the points of reference
01:01:14that you feel are most important
01:01:16for us to amplify when we think
01:01:19about how to undo this history?
01:01:23OK, as I said before,
01:01:24there's a ton I could say.
01:01:26I'll start by talking about the
01:01:29intervention this educational session
01:01:30that me and some of my friends made.
01:01:33So my friends and classmates,
01:01:35Muz autumn and Ln,
01:01:37they are African American students, as I am.
01:01:40After the death of George Floyd in 2020
01:01:43and sort of the amplification of the
01:01:45voice of the Black Lives Matter movement.
01:01:47We tried to figure out what we
01:01:49could do as Med students in this
01:01:52like very prestigious institution.
01:01:54And we read a book.
01:01:57Gosh, what was it called?
01:01:58Fatal inventions. Home.
01:02:04Dorothy Roberts, thank you.
01:02:05Written by Dorothy Roberts,
01:02:07a legal scholar.
01:02:08That was about the concept of biological
01:02:11race and basically dispelled the idea.
01:02:14You know,
01:02:15a couple 100 pages explaining to people why.
01:02:18People of different races are
01:02:21not biologically different,
01:02:22and this book came out I
01:02:24think in 2019 or 2020,
01:02:25so that shows you how pervasive
01:02:27these ideas still are.
01:02:28Basically,
01:02:29we we based a workshop with a lecture
01:02:32component from Dorothy Roberts and some
01:02:35discussion questions on this book.
01:02:37And we convinced faculty in charge
01:02:40of the orientation session for
01:02:43the first year Med students to.
01:02:46To let us include this session.
01:02:48And it it took a lot of work
01:02:50to convince them,
01:02:51but in the end we got it and
01:02:53and it was a smashing success.
01:02:54A lot of the students enjoyed it.
01:02:58I I have a friend and classmate who
01:03:00participated in the session a bunch with,
01:03:02along with a bunch of other faculty from.
01:03:07Or, sorry, graduate students from various
01:03:10departments in the humanities at Yale
01:03:12who are assisted us in this session.
01:03:14So it was a team effort. And.
01:03:20Yeah, it was great and I hope that
01:03:22we were able to convince people
01:03:24that biological race is not real.
01:03:26We thought it would be the best to
01:03:28have this session at the beginning
01:03:30of the first year because we knew
01:03:32that they would encounter these
01:03:35concepts of biological racism,
01:03:37these racist concepts,
01:03:38in lectures because we had as first years.
01:03:44So we thought this was probably the
01:03:48most effective thing we could do.
01:03:50So could you say a little bit about how
01:03:54sort of how the teaching progressed?
01:03:56You were doing the reading,
01:03:58the the reading of fatal and invention
01:04:01and there were, were there small group
01:04:03discussions sort of pedagogically,
01:04:05how did you approach it?
01:04:06And I'm thinking about this just
01:04:09because of the wonderful sort of
01:04:11like pedagogical sort of insight
01:04:13that we've gotten so far on the
01:04:15panel about how they're teaching
01:04:18these racist sorts of information.
01:04:20The visuals, the, the repetition,
01:04:23the the kind of the utter,
01:04:26the iterative nature of this knowledge
01:04:28being repeated over and over again.
01:04:31And so I'm wondering from you as
01:04:33you think about the pedagogy of
01:04:36what it was that that you know,
01:04:38came out of this.
01:04:42What do you think in
01:04:44terms of how that course?
01:04:48Can do the work of combating.
01:04:52I don't know a couple of years
01:04:54of lectures for example.
01:04:55And do you have ideas about?
01:04:58How to sort of bring that forward in in
01:05:02medical education past just the first year?
01:05:05And you also reflected on
01:05:07it in a piece of writing.
01:05:08And so any of those,
01:05:10any of those sorts of things
01:05:11that you want to sort of do to
01:05:13fill fill this in for us as well.
01:05:15Be wonderful, right.
01:05:18So pedagogically,
01:05:20he started with objectives, right.
01:05:23And that's something that we've seen
01:05:24modeled by a lot of our faculty.
01:05:26You start by what you want people
01:05:28to understand and be able to do and
01:05:30then you work backwards from there.
01:05:32So we thought we want people to
01:05:34understand first of all that.
01:05:37Races are not biologically different.
01:05:39That's a social construct.
01:05:40That's something that we wanted
01:05:42people to understand and something we
01:05:44knew that a lot of medical students
01:05:46and faculty did not understand.
01:05:49And then we also wanted to teach
01:05:52people strategies to be able to
01:05:54confront these notions as they
01:05:55encountered them in class and on the
01:05:57wards when they were seeing patients.
01:06:02So from there, so in order to address
01:06:05the first objective of teaching
01:06:07them biological race is not real,
01:06:10we had the lecture component from the author
01:06:12of the book and then the workshops were.
01:06:17Well, one aspect of it was book
01:06:20discussion questions to sort of drive
01:06:22that point home and to address maybe
01:06:25counter arguments that people would give,
01:06:27counter arguments that we anticipated and
01:06:30then the other section was real scenarios
01:06:33based on what we had encountered in lecture.
01:06:38Are basically like, you know,
01:06:40a a faculty member says this racist thing,
01:06:43what do you do?
01:06:45Um, so the section leaders,
01:06:48which were upper year medical students
01:06:52and also humanities grad students.
01:06:55Talked students through these scenarios and
01:06:57helped them figure out what they would do.
01:06:59And then later in our
01:07:01evaluation we asked students,
01:07:02did they feel like they are more
01:07:05effective at completing the goals that
01:07:07we set out after we did the session.
01:07:11And generally,
01:07:12people did feel a little more
01:07:14confident and a little stronger.
01:07:15We saw something that we already knew,
01:07:17which is it's tough to push
01:07:20back against superiors.
01:07:21Medicine is really hierarchical,
01:07:23right?
01:07:23So it's tough to confront a faculty member
01:07:25that's supposed to be teaching you.
01:07:29Thank you so much. That's wonderful.
01:07:32And so I'd like to turn now to to
01:07:34Chris and to hear you reflect on
01:07:37putting your book in conversation
01:07:38with what China has described in
01:07:41terms of this medical curriculum.
01:07:44Well, first I just want to say thank you.
01:07:47The, the anecdote you just gave is the
01:07:49kind of thing that took, you know,
01:07:52the book is made-up of finding these
01:07:54small moments that people don't say in
01:07:57public and people ask me all the time.
01:08:00What do they do in medical schools?
01:08:03I wish I knew so, but I know that these
01:08:07ideas don't appear out of nowhere.
01:08:09So one thing I've I've been
01:08:11thinking and a collaborator,
01:08:13and I've been trying to work on
01:08:15an article about the need for more
01:08:17history of medical racism education,
01:08:19and I wonder what that faculty
01:08:21member would have thought.
01:08:23If they knew that the biggest
01:08:25popularizer of the idea of smaller
01:08:27lung capacity was Samuel Cartwright,
01:08:29the inventor of the theory,
01:08:31or the disease, you know,
01:08:33say inventor of disease called drapetomania,
01:08:36which was a disease that supposedly
01:08:37caused enslaved people to run away.
01:08:41I would like to think.
01:08:43I don't know, I still have some faith
01:08:45in humanity after writing this book
01:08:48that that would give someone pause.
01:08:50But yeah, I think one of
01:08:52the biggest things it's.
01:08:53Just stunning is.
01:08:54That this is happening on a
01:08:57day-to-day basis still in the
01:08:59medical school and how how we get.
01:09:02I just genuinely think that nobody,
01:09:04no modern physician,
01:09:06wants to be associated with these
01:09:08ideas that they don't see as ideas
01:09:10rooted in the plantation and stealing
01:09:13bodies from public graveyards and.
01:09:18It just wouldn't it be
01:09:19amazing if Samuel Cartwright got it right?
01:09:21Like, what are you?
01:09:22Yeah, sorry, I'm just was floored by that.
01:09:24I'm still recovering.
01:09:25But I think this what's so profound,
01:09:27especially on anatomical differences,
01:09:29almost all of these odd
01:09:32ideas come from people who.
01:09:35Are 19th century Polygenists who?
01:09:39Nobody else is citing them
01:09:41for and for any context,
01:09:42but they just get reproduced, reproduced,
01:09:44cited and cited and cited to where you
01:09:47think you're citing somebody from 1970,
01:09:49but you're really citing
01:09:51somebody from 1830 and I think.
01:09:54I mean, first,
01:09:54I think, you know,
01:09:55we all owe you a round of
01:09:57applause for doing that.
01:10:02It's the kind of work I would I've
01:10:04always I want to see and I think.
01:10:06Adding in addition to Dorothy
01:10:08Roberts's profound work,
01:10:09and I love how she actually
01:10:11includes history in her sociology,
01:10:12but yeah, also getting into what?
01:10:14Where do these ideas come from?
01:10:15They don't emerge out of nowhere.
01:10:17They're not.
01:10:19They're not 21st century ideas, they are.
01:10:22Ideas by people who were bleeding
01:10:24people at the same time and
01:10:26giving them opium like those
01:10:27were the main therapeutics.
01:10:29So maybe we can discard one more terrible
01:10:32idea from the 18th and 19th century.
01:10:37Thank you so much and Leanna.
01:10:42So. Discussion. Yes, it was
01:10:47what sorry. Yes, it was wonderful. It was
01:10:51a wonderful discussion and again I just
01:10:52want to say thanks for getting the
01:10:54the program off the ground.
01:10:57And yes, I think it was wonderful
01:10:59to have an opportunity to,
01:11:00like Chris said, excavate those.
01:11:03The the the long history of these
01:11:06ideas and also to have a space
01:11:08where people could come in and
01:11:10having read the Dorothy Roberts
01:11:12book and just talk a little bit,
01:11:15do a little bit of self reflection,
01:11:16take an assessment of what
01:11:18their ideas of race were
01:11:20before they read this book.
01:11:22Tried to be honest about that, right.
01:11:24And also to understand that,
01:11:25you know, we're all there,
01:11:26we're all there really to grow from that,
01:11:28whatever it was that the
01:11:30baseline was coming in.
01:11:31And I really appreciated
01:11:32too how I mean one of the.
01:11:34I'm not sure if it was an objective,
01:11:36but one of the things that was made
01:11:38extremely clear was there is no upgrade.
01:11:42We are not, you know, there is no question
01:11:45now anymore about the biological,
01:11:50the biological nature of race.
01:11:52But just like I I just really
01:11:54appreciated that there was no,
01:11:56you know, there was no need for me as
01:11:58a discussion to even hear someone out
01:12:00if they wanted to talk about that.
01:12:02I was just, you know, I just had.
01:12:05I had the, the backing tube, you know,
01:12:08to shut that down if I did hear that.
01:12:09And I just think that
01:12:11is a huge deficit. That is
01:12:12obviously a huge development, right?
01:12:14If we're not even questioning these
01:12:16things anymore, we're just stating them
01:12:18as facts that they are, then I I mean,
01:12:21I feel like that is really huge
01:12:23because that is of course, I think.
01:12:27I mean for for me, approaching the
01:12:29history of race and medicine too,
01:12:31I there was always something, especially
01:12:32before I read Dorothy Roberts book,
01:12:34where I would wonder why do scientists
01:12:37and doctors keep debating this?
01:12:39What is I'm not a, you know, a geneticist.
01:12:41Maybe I'm missing something
01:12:43way in the details here.
01:12:44And then after reading that book,
01:12:46I realized, no,
01:12:47there is absolutely nothing there.
01:12:50And so I just really appreciated the,
01:12:53the new path forward that no,
01:12:55we're not going to discuss this.
01:12:57Anymore we are starting on a on a different
01:13:00playing field basically and yeah and.
01:13:03And just as I said and just to finish
01:13:05I guess as I said I really do think
01:13:08that's got to be the first step to.
01:13:10Working through this history to addressing
01:13:13it in a concrete way as it happened,
01:13:16but making sure we're not repeating
01:13:17it for the next generation of people of
01:13:20doctors. Thank you so much. And Sean?
01:13:25Yeah. Let me
01:13:26just repeat. I mean,
01:13:27it's really exciting to actually.
01:13:29Here an example of people like
01:13:31actively fighting these ideas in
01:13:33this context because, you know,
01:13:35a major point I think of all of
01:13:36our researchers, historians is
01:13:38the way that these ideas persist.
01:13:40They persist across all kinds of boundaries.
01:13:43They're insidious, they're everywhere.
01:13:44And what's so hard about them is they
01:13:47often get repeated without like sort
01:13:49of a conscience engagement, right.
01:13:51And that I think forcing people to
01:13:54engage consciously is like probably
01:13:56the the main thing we can do to like.
01:13:59Change people, right?
01:14:02I think it's in the epilogue of
01:14:03Christ's book he mentions a study from
01:14:05I don't know the 2010 or so about.
01:14:08I think it was in Virginia.
01:14:09They 162016.
01:14:11Yeah.
01:14:11So UVA they did a study and they
01:14:14they pulled medical students
01:14:16about like different kinds of.
01:14:18Like racial differences, right?
01:14:21And. Medical students.
01:14:24Claimed that they believed a
01:14:26lot of things that you know.
01:14:29It's the best seem outdated.
01:14:33But one of the
01:14:34things that I, I think has come out of
01:14:37follow-ups to that study too is that
01:14:39when you educate people and like point
01:14:41out that these ideas exist but that
01:14:43they're wrong and that they're outdated,
01:14:45that people do change.
01:14:46And this doesn't just change
01:14:48the way people think.
01:14:49It actually changes how health outcomes
01:14:52and therapeutics right. It changes.
01:14:54It tends to level racial disparities
01:14:57in prescribing pain medication,
01:15:00for instance. And so I.
01:15:02I don't think I need to repeat the
01:15:04historical stuff because I think
01:15:04these two covered it really well.
01:15:06But it's it is really exciting
01:15:07to see people actively working
01:15:09on this in medical school.
01:15:10Then it's not just us
01:15:13like cursing these people
01:15:14in the 19th century.
01:15:19Wonderful. I want to pause because
01:15:22I looked at the time and I know that
01:15:24we want to have questions from the,
01:15:27our, our virtual guests and our
01:15:29guests in the audience here.
01:15:31So is this a good time for us to do that?
01:15:34Yeah. OK. So I want to open
01:15:38it up here and I think.
01:15:41Professor Warner, you are looking at
01:15:44the the questions perhaps that are
01:15:47coming through virtually as well.
01:15:50OK, wonderful. Oh, wonderful, wonderful.
01:15:54So I'll open it up here for those
01:15:59gathered for us to ask a question
01:16:01to any of our panelists.
01:16:07Yes.
01:16:36Moment.
01:16:56I don't know if it would be helpful for me
01:16:58to repeat that if the people on zoom and
01:17:01and OK so Professor Rogers very helpfully
01:17:04asked this question about how do we address.
01:17:08These issues at the clinical level,
01:17:10what kinds of interventions might be possible
01:17:14to do and I'd love to hear from from Eugenia,
01:17:18but also from our historians if you
01:17:22feel like there is also a role for
01:17:25history in those moments as well.
01:17:28And so can we start with you China?
01:17:31Yes, so. You all will be happy to
01:17:34know that it's not just me and my
01:17:36friends working on this, right?
01:17:38There's a network of mostly trainees,
01:17:41so medical students and residents
01:17:42around the country who've been
01:17:44trying to address this issue,
01:17:46and some of the work that
01:17:48they've been doing includes.
01:17:49There's there's some algorithms
01:17:53that are built in to our computer
01:17:57software and everything that we use
01:17:59to to help us make clinical decisions
01:18:01that actually include race as one of
01:18:04the factors in their calculations.
01:18:06And all that sounds wild,
01:18:07but it shows up in a lot of places
01:18:09in medicine.
01:18:10One example is EGFR,
01:18:12which is a measure of how well your
01:18:15kidneys are working that actually
01:18:17includes a variable for race.
01:18:19And so that's something that Dorothy
01:18:21Roberts addresses in her book and
01:18:24something that as students and
01:18:25residents around the country have
01:18:27been trying to get changed and taken
01:18:29out of the algorithm and they've
01:18:32been successful at a lot of places.
01:18:35I wish I was more up to date on this,
01:18:36but I know they're in the process
01:18:38of doing it here and they might
01:18:39have already succeeded.
01:18:40So that's very exciting.
01:18:41There are other examples of that that we also
01:18:44discussed in the workshop that we developed,
01:18:45for example.
01:18:48Women or people who are giving birth,
01:18:53you're making the decision whether
01:18:55to let them attempt a vaginal
01:18:57birth or do a C-section.
01:18:59There are a lot of things that
01:19:00factor into that decision,
01:19:01and there's actually like
01:19:03an equation that we use.
01:19:05And that equation I think still
01:19:07includes race as a factor.
01:19:10So if someone is black or Hispanic,
01:19:12you are less likely to let them
01:19:14proceed and try a vaginal birth.
01:19:17And we know that vaginal births.
01:19:18Healthier in a lot of ways the
01:19:22the recovery is shorter.
01:19:24So.
01:19:25That's happening in 2022,
01:19:28but that's another thing that
01:19:29people are trying to change.
01:19:32Thank you so much, Cheney and Chris,
01:19:35would you like to would you
01:19:37like to give some thoughts?
01:19:39Well, I think one of the things that I I
01:19:41found in my book and where I end is that.
01:19:44Kind of tend to
01:19:46think that like everybody's at the same
01:19:48place at but faculty live for a long time.
01:19:52I don't know what to say
01:19:53about that, but they they seem to
01:19:55and the standards of education,
01:19:57the standards of knowledge are
01:19:59different when they're teaching from
01:20:01when when they when they learned it.
01:20:04So I think. Actually having some required
01:20:07training for anybody who's teaching
01:20:09medical students would be fantastic.
01:20:12And then you also have a standard
01:20:14to hold them to as if like it's
01:20:16very hard as people point out,
01:20:18there's a hierarchy, hierarchy in history.
01:20:20Also we don't like to go around correcting
01:20:23people who might control our job in future.
01:20:26So I think, I think having an actual built
01:20:29in system to make sure that you know,
01:20:32nobody comes in and says all
01:20:34black people's lungs are smaller.
01:20:36And that if they do that,
01:20:38that person has to then be,
01:20:39I'm not going to say we take
01:20:41them off to the gulag,
01:20:42but they have to have some sort of
01:20:44discussion and it should be also
01:20:46more proactive than just waiting
01:20:48for somebody to say something.
01:20:50But but when you have that previous
01:20:53standards then I think you can
01:20:55hold people accountable much better
01:20:57wonderful and some brief thoughts
01:21:00also from from Leanna and Sean and
01:21:03then we'll go to a zoom question.
01:21:07I'll just say two they even in history.
01:21:11You, you encounter people who have
01:21:14ideas about race that I would
01:21:16say are not factual.
01:21:19And um. And sometimes that's a colleague,
01:21:22sometimes that's maybe a professor.
01:21:24And you know, I think it's
01:21:27important in all fields to try to
01:21:29have these discussions right and.
01:21:31You know, and try to point out like no,
01:21:33this idea isn't. Isn't considered
01:21:36fractional anymore, right? Like.
01:21:40I you know, the and there's a lot
01:21:42of diseases and medical conditions
01:21:44that in the public imagination are
01:21:46still very much tied to race, right?
01:21:48Sickle cell anemia is,
01:21:49is probably the most well known one.
01:21:51And while there's sort of correlation with
01:21:54like racial statistics in the United States,
01:21:57it's important to point out that
01:21:59those racial categories that we start
01:22:01with are social categories, right?
01:22:03They're based on a biological reality,
01:22:05but they're not.
01:22:07Actually biologically,
01:22:08biologically pertinent and if
01:22:10you look at like.
01:22:12A A map of West Africa,
01:22:14right where a lot of in enslaved people
01:22:17in the Americas originally came from.
01:22:19There's huge variation in
01:22:22that sickle cell trait,
01:22:23but it at very at at the level of
01:22:26individual like genetic populations,
01:22:28right to to generalize across all those
01:22:32little tiny populations which were in
01:22:36different ways isolated for different
01:22:38periods of time or intermingled.
01:22:39You know you know these are these.
01:22:42Races are made-up of lots of
01:22:45little populations, right?
01:22:46And so to think to like to
01:22:49assign those little trades to to.
01:22:51A whole race,
01:22:52right?
01:22:53Which again is this artificial grouping
01:22:54that's supposed to have a biological reality,
01:22:56but is it really?
01:22:58Tends to be much more based on
01:23:00outward types that don't have a lot
01:23:01to do with things like genetics, so.
01:23:04Thank you. And Leanna,
01:23:05did you have anything to add
01:23:07just just to say I totally agree with
01:23:10what Chris and Sean are saying and I
01:23:12would also love to see more historians
01:23:15in clinical settings however that that.
01:23:17You know, can be made possible.
01:23:20And I think it needs to be the kind
01:23:24of history where we're not just
01:23:26celebrating ourselves for being
01:23:28better than like some of the guys,
01:23:30the two medical students that
01:23:31I talked about tonight, right.
01:23:32It has to be in conversation with
01:23:35other medical students who are
01:23:37experiencing and seeing, you know,
01:23:39the fact that racist attitudes are still
01:23:41alive and well and in clinical practice.
01:23:43So it needs to be,
01:23:45needs to be taught as a thing
01:23:46that's ongoing and we need to be.
01:23:48And continually unraveling not just
01:23:49something we've safely put behind us.
01:23:53Thank you so much and Doctor Warner. Yeah.
01:24:01That I think gets at
01:24:02helped. How do we relate?
01:24:04Looking at the history and doing
01:24:06something now isn't going to do it,
01:24:08so I'll just read it. They're right.
01:24:11The medical student being should
01:24:13be praised because she's awesome.
01:24:14We agree with them.
01:24:17But she's questioning authority
01:24:19at personal risk in her career.
01:24:21What can the medical school to
01:24:23change the structure so that she
01:24:25wouldn't never need to figure out
01:24:27where the racism is in her education?
01:24:32What a good question. Umm, Gina,
01:24:36do you have ideas about this?
01:24:41So. I agree with with what's
01:24:43already been said by my colleagues.
01:24:46If we could hold faculty to some sort
01:24:49of standard, then it wouldn't be my
01:24:51job to try to hold them to a standard
01:24:54and to try to argue with the people
01:24:56who are supposed to be teaching me,
01:24:58and also to come into class wondering if
01:25:02what I'm learning is correct or not. So,
01:25:06yeah, hold faculty accountable and decide on,
01:25:10decide that this is the truth, right?
01:25:12Because it is decide that biological racism.
01:25:16Is. Wrong.
01:25:17And then actually inject that
01:25:21idea into the curriculum.
01:25:24There are efforts already being made.
01:25:26So a faculty member member named
01:25:28Doctor Beverly Shears was appointed
01:25:30the head of the HealthEquity thread.
01:25:33And her what that means is her job
01:25:35is to look at all of the curriculum
01:25:38across the four years for Med
01:25:40students and I guess find all of
01:25:42the racism and sexism and homophobia
01:25:45and xenophobia and take it all out.
01:25:48I don't know how that's going at the moment,
01:25:50but um, I think that's a start.
01:25:53Absolutely.
01:25:54Absolutely.
01:25:55And let's see, how are we doing for time?
01:25:58We are at time.
01:26:00Would it be OK for us to spend just
01:26:03another couple of minutes hearing
01:26:06final thoughts from our panelists?
01:26:09Yeah.
01:26:09So I would just love to hear any
01:26:12last thoughts that you would
01:26:13like to give to the audience.
01:26:15Umm, final thoughts and reflections.
01:26:19And starting with with Chris and then
01:26:21we'll move our way down the table.
01:26:24Well, and thinking about that last question
01:26:26also a little bit, is that one of the,
01:26:29I think the big takeaways of my book is that?
01:26:32These are institutional problems.
01:26:34They need to be solved institutionally,
01:26:37both in in terms of individual institutions.
01:26:39But nationally, we can look at
01:26:41individual professors I discussed,
01:26:43but they're interchangeable.
01:26:45The person before them.
01:26:47And no offense to all the professors here,
01:26:49but they're they're just firing one
01:26:54person or focusing on one bad actor
01:26:57isn't going to solve this problem.
01:27:00It's an institutional problem.
01:27:03From. A wide reaching one.
01:27:05So I think where it needs to
01:27:07be addressed is at the, the,
01:27:09the level of the institution.
01:27:10And it's,
01:27:11it shouldn't be China's responsibility,
01:27:14it just shouldn't be and yeah.
01:27:17Oh, that's it.
01:27:18Thank you.
01:27:21I don't have
01:27:22much to add to that except to
01:27:25say that I I very much agree.
01:27:29And I would also like to see
01:27:32really institution because it
01:27:33is an institutional problem,
01:27:35more institutional driven and housed
01:27:36projects to deal with these kind of like
01:27:39the project that Sean and I are working on.
01:27:41But even into the more recent past,
01:27:43I think there's, I mean you know,
01:27:45our project is just going up
01:27:47until the Civil War, 1865,
01:27:49the end of the Civil War.
01:27:51But there, you know we've
01:27:53already talked about the, the,
01:27:56the legacies of the issues though.
01:27:59We are discovering and how they continue
01:28:01to shape the relationship between
01:28:03the medical school and New Haven and
01:28:05New Haven and also the relationship
01:28:07between New Haven and the hospital,
01:28:09I think in particular.
01:28:10So there's still so much.
01:28:13To be done,
01:28:14and I would really like to see
01:28:16just more institutional backing for
01:28:18major research projects like that.
01:28:22Yeah, and I
01:28:23also build on what Chris said about
01:28:25the need for institutional change.
01:28:27But it's also about larger culture,
01:28:30like outside of institutions,
01:28:32it's right ideas of race.
01:28:35Pervade our culture because our culture,
01:28:37our culture, really all the cultures of the
01:28:41world at this point have been reckoning,
01:28:44creating, reckoning,
01:28:45dealing with ideas of race for oh,
01:28:48at least 500 years, right.
01:28:50Like this is this is like a
01:28:51long term persistent problem.
01:28:52But what it's also done is,
01:28:54is it's left all these tiny things.
01:28:56It's left at medical education,
01:28:57but it's also left in the wider society.
01:28:59And so I think you know these approaches
01:29:01that Tina is talking about in the
01:29:04medical school and we're talking about.
01:29:05We also need to try to bring these sort
01:29:07of into our wider lives, right, you know?
01:29:11Help. Kindly correct friends, you know,
01:29:14correct parents or whoever, right?
01:29:17That that when these ideas come up,
01:29:19be like
01:29:19I, you know, I don't really think
01:29:20that's true right? Just something.
01:29:22Kind right? Because I don't think
01:29:25being super. Aggressive helps,
01:29:27but but on the other hand we need to.
01:29:31As a as a wider culture, as a,
01:29:32as a whole society need to to
01:29:34confront racial stereotypes,
01:29:36incorrect information about
01:29:38the biological ideas of race,
01:29:39really, wherever we see it,
01:29:41I think that's crucial.
01:29:45Yes, I think Sean said it so well,
01:29:47I'd I would ask everyone in the room,
01:29:50everyone on zoom, if you hear these sorts
01:29:53of ideas which you undoubtedly will like,
01:29:56someone saying that races
01:29:59are biologically different,
01:30:00try to address it, try to question it.
01:30:04Please educate yourselves by reading books
01:30:07like Masters of Health written by Chris or
01:30:10Fatal invention written by Dorothy Roberts,
01:30:13so you know how to make these arguments.
01:30:15Um. And it is part of the larger culture.
01:30:19It's not just medicine.
01:30:21As Chris so eloquently pointed out in his
01:30:25book, Madison had a role in establishing
01:30:29scientific race, biological racism.
01:30:30So we have a role of in getting rid of it.
01:30:34I I, I think a lot of the
01:30:37responsibility lies with doctors,
01:30:39with the medical field.
01:30:41To dispel this,
01:30:42people look at us as educators and leaders.
01:30:47Thank you all so much.
01:30:48And I just wanted to say an
01:30:51additional congratulations to
01:30:53Chris for this magnificent book.
01:30:55It is going to be the beginning of I
01:30:58think many conversations at many places
01:31:00around the country and internationally.
01:31:03And so thank you all for coming and it's
01:31:05been wonderful to be here with all of you.