The cotton kingdom: a traveller's observations on cotton and slavery in the American slave states. Based upon three former volumes of journeys and investigations ... By Frederick Law Olmsted...

122 COTTON AND SLAVERY.
especial depravity of the African race. I should suspect it to
be, if it cannot be otherwise accounted for, the natural instinct of freedom in a man, working out capriciously, as the
wild instincts of domesticated beasts and birds sometimes do.
But the learned Dr. Cartwright, of the University of
Louisiana, believes that slaves are subject to a peculiar form
of mental disease, termed by him Drapetomania, which, like
a malady that cats are liable to, manifests itself by an irrestrainable propensity to run away; and in a work on the
diseases of negroes, highly esteemed at the South for its
patriotism and erudition, he advises planters of the proper
preventive and curative measures to be taken for it.
He asserts that, "with the advantage of proper medical
advice, strictly followed, this troublesome practice of running
away, that many negroes have, can be almost entirely prevented." Its symptoms and the usual empirical practice on
the plantations are described: "Before negroes run,aw\-y,
unless they are frightened or panic-struck, they become siulky
and dissatisfied. The cause of this sulkiness and dissatisfaction should be inquired into and removed, or they are apt
to run away or fall into the negro consumption." When sulky
or dissatisfied without cause, the experience of those having
most practice with drapetomania, the Doctor thinks, has been
in favour of "whipping them out of it." It is vulgarly
called, "whipping the devil out of them," he afterwards
informs us.
Another droll sort of "indisposition," thought to be peculiar to the slaves, and which must greatly affect their value,
as compared with free labourers, is described by Dr. Cartwright, as follows:"DYSESTHESIA AETHIOPICA, or Hebetude of Mind and Obtuse Sensibility
of Body. * * * From the careless movements of the individuals affected
with this complaint, they are apt to do much mischief, which appears as if
ntentional, but is mostly owing to the stupidness of mind and insensibility