Books by Todd L. Savitt

With a few notable exceptions, historians have tended to ignore the role that science and medicine played in the antebellum American South. The fourteen essays in Science and Medicine in the Old South help to redress that neglect by considering scientific and medical developments in the early nineteenth-century South.

Offers an insight into the alleged medical differences between whites and blacks that translated as racial inferiority. This work evaluates the diet, hygiene, clothing, and living and working conditions of African Americans, and analyzes the diseases and health conditions that afflicted them in urban areas, at industrial sites, and on plantations.