Now, more than ever, we are being called to trust in science. Modern discoveries have led to historic advances, and contemporary society is begging us all to “listen to the experts.” Whether in regard to the safety or efficacy of a vaccine, the analysis of big data, or even the impending doom of our planet, scientific experts, researchers, and doctors are constantly studying, informing, and warning us. In the end, it comes down to the public, to those who choose to believe or not, to those who trust or don’t, to those who heed the warning and to those who brush it off. However, this trust, this faith in scientific authority, is not one-size-fits-all. Our society is scattered with pillars of systemic discrimination and webs of complex realities, and science is no different. Many inequalities still exist today, especially in medicine, where POC have drastically different outcomes than their white counterparts. For example, in just 2015, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that POC experienced lower life expectancy rates, lower vaccination rates, higher blood pressures, and increased strains on mental health (Rees). Moreover, this discrimination is longstanding and historic, with many well-documented atrocities against POC being disguised as medical advancement. In her monograph Medical Bondage, Dr. Deirdre Cooper Owens investigates this medical racism by uncovering the history of gynecology, highlighting the synergistic relationship between slavery, medicine, and science, all while humanizing and retrieving the lives of the enslaved women who propelled the rise of American gynecology.

Although Cooper Owens expertly delineates the synergistic relationship between slavery, medicine, and science, she explains that Medical Bondage is more about uncovering and crediting the lost “mothers” of American gynecology, the enslaved women essential the revolution of women’s medicine. She explains, “this book highlights the complicated relationship between slavery and medicine…but a common theme runs throughout it: the importance of enslaved women to the development of American gynecology” (Cooper Owens, 12). Specifically, Cooper Owens focuses on two expanding arguments. First, that reproductive medicine was “essential to the maintenance and success of southern slavery.” Second, that southern doctors knew that the labor of enslaved women assisted in the revolution of gynecology (Cooper Owens, 4). Together, these two arguments provide the foundation for the synergistic relationship that Cooper Owens emphasizes. With developed women’s medicine amplifying the success of slavery came an increase in the labor provided by enslaved women, producing a positive feedback loop. This relationship, alongside the expansion of scientific racism through false beliefs of difference and inferiority, contributed to the complex and cooperative web of racism, slavery, medicine, science, and capitalism, especially during the antebellum era.

Dr. Deirdre Cooper Owens is the Charles and Linda Wilson Professor in the History of Medicine and Director of the Humanities in Medicine Program at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, one of two Black women in the U.S. running such a program. A popular speaker and award-winning historian, Dr. Cooper Owens is also the Director of the Program in African American History at the Library Company of Philadelphia, America’s oldest cultural institution with one of the most significant collections of printed material in the U.S.. After attending two HBCUs, Cooper Owens attainted her Ph.D. in history from UCLA, gathering a number of prestigious fellowships along the way. Described by Time Magazine as one of America’s most “acclaimed experts in U.S. history”, Cooper Owens is also a Distinguished Lecturer in the Organization of American Historians (OAH). Medical Bondage is the first book written by Cooper Owens, winning the 2018 Darlene Clark Hine Book Award from the OAH for the best book written in African American women’s and gender history. Currently working on a second book focusing on mental health during the era of slavery, Dr. Cooper Owens brings fresh and compelling analyses of historical inequalities in American medicine, especially in the context of the complex relationships between slavery and science in the United States.

Medical Bondage employs the use of multitudes of primary sources in an effort to best portray the perceptions, attitudes, and relationships between the contributors to American gynecology, each with their own advantages. For example, case narratives and written descriptions of patient histories display that “black women experienced both antebellum professional medical care and racism” (Cooper Owens, 8). Medical and slave management journals also make up a large portion of Cooper Owens’s sources, with strong archival evidence providing detailed information on the treatment by and of enslaved women laboring in maternal and women’s health. However, in line with the goal of reclaiming the lives of these women, Dr. Cooper Owens draws more on these direct accounts of life, citing the oral histories of several former slaves, medical case narratives, the personal papers of slave owners, and judicial cases (Cooper Owens, 73). On a similar note, Cooper Owens utilizes plantation records, ledgers, and interviews to disclose the objectifying attitude of doctors towards slaves and poor immigrants (Cooper Owens, 8), building on this objectification in her later identification of black women as “medical superbodies”, explicitly “inferior” to white counterparts yet capable of enormous feats of strength, providing medical assistance, and serving as both the experimental subjects and esteemed models for the development of American gynecology (Cooper Owens, 109). In addition to the focus on enslaved Black women, Dr. Cooper Owens also analyzes medical experiences of poor Irish immigrant women in the antebellum era, accentuating and condemning the use of vulnerable female populations for exploratory and experimental gynecological surgeries. While previous scholarly works identified enslaved women and Irish immigrants are subjects of interest, Medical Bondage sets itself apart by illuminating the effects of medicine and science on the lives of oppressed women, ultimately highlighting the synergistic relationship Cooper Owens emphasizes so adamantly (Cooper Owens, 3-4). By comparing the experiences of Black enslaved women, Irish women, and white men, specific attention is provided to “antebellum-era racial formation theories” about blackness and how this both complicated and contributed to the development of American gynecology. Through this comparison, Cooper Owens successfully “retrieves the lives” of owned women beyond the hospital bed, honoring them alongside the doctors that experimented on them.

When reading Medical Bondage, a clear strength is just how well Dr. Cooper Owens is able to humanize the lives of enslaved women. By clearly defining and explaining the “synergistic relationship” of science and racism, and with the logic behind the term “medical superbodies”, the reader quickly visualizes the situations described by Cooper Owens. Whether through the quoting of enslaved women like Marriah Hines or Mary Reynolds, the close readings of case narratives and surgical procedures, or through the analysis of archived records from slave hospitals, it is remarkable just how much Dr. Cooper Owens is able to paint the picture of historical and inescapable oppression. The sheer scale of information, especially in the form of genuine primary sources, is exceptional and a clear strength of Medical Bondage. Moreover, this information is provided in a very accessible way, explaining baseline truths before exploring more complex concepts such as the hypocritical and binary notion of sameness and difference intrinsic to the “medical superbodies” of enslaved Black women. On the other hand, amplified analysis into metanarratives of “medical superbodies” and the experiences of the enslaved women can lead to issues regarding interpretation. Cooper Owens herself acknowledges this, encouraging further examination of these metanarratives while cautioning that many sources cannot fully capture or exhibit these elusive racial and medical metanarratives, as they are authored solely by white men (Cooper Owens, 85). Nevertheless, with her meticulous examination of firsthand accounts of enslaved women, Dr. Cooper Owens is careful in her characterizations of the reproductive realities experienced by enslaved Black women.

All things considered, Deirdre Cooper Owens masterfully explores the intertwining nature of slavery, medicine, and science in the antebellum-era United States. Medical Bondage provides both harrowing, groundbreaking accounts of medical racism and abuse in the development of American gynecology. While this book sheds light on the nature of medical racism, and provides the framework for understanding aspects of systemic racism still present in our society today, Medical Bondage might hold a higher value for those pursuing further education in medicine. As mentioned, medical racism is still present in our society today, and the notions of “medical superbodies” and treatment of enslaved women described in Medical Bondage begin to decode the evolution of medical oppression of POC in the United States. For those pursuing healthcare, understanding this history and being aware of its impacts can often be overlooked. However, healthcare is about much more medicine and science. Without the understanding of historical realities and the courage to acknowledge history’s impact on contemporary situations, the distrust of science and medicine will continue.  Through Medical Bondage, one can begin to understand just how complex the relationship between science and self can be, and how important it is to interrogate it.

Works Cited

Cooper Owens, Deirdre. Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology. University of Georgia Press, 2017.

Dr. Deirdre Cooper Owens. “Bio.” Accessed November 7, 2021. https://www.deirdrecooperowens.com/bio

Rees, Mathieu. “Racism in Healthcare: Statistics and Examples,” September 17, 2020. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/racism-in-healthcare.