Coerced Care: Thomas Thistlewood's Account of Medical Practice on Enslaved Populations in Colonial Jamaica, 1751–1786

Abstract

This essay uses the Thistlewood family papers as a health record for the enslaved population in Jamaica. It examines the medical aspects of Thistlewood's journals, contextualising them in the social, political and cultural environment in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Examples of his provisions for medical care throughout his life are investigated systematically. Through counts from the original documents, the author identifies a seasonal pattern of disease and mortality on large and small Jamaican plantations and estimates an infant mortality rate of approximately 420 per 1000 births for Jamaican infants born into slavery.