The enslaved healers of eighteenth-century Saint Domingue.

Abstract

Enslaved healers including herbalists, kaperlatas, hospitalières, infirmières, and accoucheuses existed and flourished in the medical world of Saint Domingue. They were responsible for the creation of an indigenous form of medicine on the island. Using Western, African, and Caribbean remedies, they treated their fellow slaves and white residents of the island. Slaves were more comfortable and more familiar with the care and techniques employed by the popular healers, especially the kaperlatas and the herbalists. Plantation managers took advantage of the labor of female medical workers in order to reap economic profits for their planter employers and for themselves. Lower-class whites, unable to afford and unwilling to consult mainstream medical care, sought the assistance of healers known as kaperlatas. Lastly, orthodox medical practitioners turned to slave healers, especially herbalists, to exploit the therapeutic knowledge that the slaves possessed and, in the case of enslaved midwives, to bring them more closely under the authority of European medical men.