Opium, procès et esclavage

Unnecessary Sleep: Opium, the Trial of Ann, and the Therapeutic Dilemma of Slavery

Lecture

The Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge is delighted to give advance notice that Keith Wailoo (Princeton University) will give the Cambridge Lecture in the History of Medicine on Thursday 6 March 2025 at 3:30–5:00 pm. The public lecture will be followed by a reception. Prof. Wailoo will also lead an informal workshop at 11:30 am the same day.

As global opium markets expanded in the nineteenth century, the drug presented a deep therapeutic dilemma. Valued for vanquishing pain and inducing sleep, opium also heightened fears about its habit-forming capacity. Prized amid recurring cholera epidemics, opium products also provoked worry over their capacity to poison and kill. This talk – previewing my next book – examines a single murder trial of an enslaved girl in 1850 Tennessee, accused of using opium to kill the infant child of her master. At issue in the case was her knowledge of the uses and misuses of laudanum, an opium concoction. The case sheds light on an unexplored aspect of the nineteenth-century opium dilemma – the interplay of vital need and fear of poisoning as manifest in the context of U.S. slavery. The case also illuminates how the courts waded into this therapeutic dilemma – how law and medicine interacted in adjudicating questions of knowledge, intent, culpability, and the maintenance of social order as opium found its way onto the North American slave plantation.

WORKSHOP

We will discuss the following short pieces, including as examples of history writing for broader, including policy audiences:

2016, “Thinking Through Pain,” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine
2017, “Sickle Cell Disease: Between Peril and Progress,” New England Journal of Medicine
2019, “The FDA’s Proposed Ban on Menthol Cigarettes,” New England Journal of Medicine
2020, “Spectacles of Difference: The Racial Scripting of Epidemic Disparities,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine

All welcome. Save the date!