Charles Caldwell

Charles Caldwell was born in North Carolina in 1772. He graduated from Penn’s medical school in 1796 and practiced medicine in Philadelphia and gave lectures at Penn before moving to Kentucky to help establish other medical institutes. Two of his publications provide insight into the ways different Penn alumni participated in the national conversation about race science:

In 1813, Caldwell penned an article criticizing Samuel Stanhope Smith’s ‘Essay on the Causes of the Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species.’

Smith, a Presbyterian minister, argued that a person’s complexion was influenced by the climate, the state of one’s society and one’s manner of living. Smith claimed the hot African sun caused an overproduction of ‘bile Africans leading to darkening of the skin.’

In response, Caldwell argued that climate cannot have an influence on skin color. He supported this argument by using logic and pointing to different people living in the same climate with complexions of varying shades. Additionally, Caldwell stated that natural, physical differences between Africans and Caucasians that could not be explained by climate alone. Among these differences, he mentioned the African man’s ‘short forehead, protruding lower jaw, thick lips, and depressed nose.’

Smith and Caldwell both ended with the conclusion that Morality cannot be determined by physical features, but, instead, seated in the brain and mental abilities. However, Caldwell asserted that the African brain was smaller than the European, and thus Africans shared no similarities with Caucasians

In 1853, one year before his death, Caldwell published an essay titled ‘Thoughts on the Original Unity of the Human Race.’

Caldwell furthers his separates races and doubles down on his justification of the institution of slavery. He claims that African muscles are stronger and larger, and thus, can bear more labor. He also claims that the lower extremity of Africans is not as straight as that of the Caucasian. This anatomical difference ‘proves’ that the African is not adapted to the maintenance of an erect attitude, and is thus an inferior animal.

Although Caldwell lambasted the idea that complexion is influenced by climate, he was a strong supporter of the idea of polygenesis, a pseudoscientific theory that states that different human races are of different species and origins. He believed that Caucasian was the primary race (white) while secondary races, Mongolian, African, Indian, were created by God after Noah’s flood.

~ Research conducted by Grace Cho

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Samuel Henry Dickson

Henry Dickson was born in South Carolina in 1798. He studied medicine at Penn and graduated in 1819. Dickson returned to South Carolina after graduating and established a medical college, but later returned to Philadelphia as the Chair of Practice of Medicine at Jefferson Medical College

In 1845, Dickson published “Remarks on certain topics connected with the general subject of slavery.” This text, published in the South, was broken into 2 separate articles, both touching on the subject of slavery. In these articles, he admits that ‘Wrong has been done to the negro,’ but with the caveat that they have not lost anything. Dickson claims that any harm to which enslaved people have been subjected is outweighed by the fact that they have been fed, taught, clothed, and otherwise provided for. He goes on to claim that slaves lost very little after the ‘horrors of the middle passage past.’ The most significant of losses being a ‘change of residence’ which traded black leaders for a ‘white despot.’ From these observations, Dickson ascertains that abolition is neither ‘possible nor desirable.’ In the defense of his ideas, it is easy to see the echoes of the ideas posited by Caldwell, and other doctors with similar philosophies.

In 1828, Dickson published an “Account of the Epidemic which prevailed in Charleston, S.C. during the summer of 1827.” In this article, Dickson expresses his significant interest in Yellow Fever. Before graduating from Penn, he wrote a doctoral thesis on the History of Yellow Fever in Charleston in 1817. After graduating, he returned to South Carolina and assisted a doctor at a temporary Yellow Fever hospital. Taking influence from research by Benjamin Rush he assumed African Americans were immune to the Yellow Fever. Even after Rush published an article 1974 noting his mistake Dickson claimed ‘I have never known an African negro to be attacked [by yellow fever].’ Though it had already been established that there was no racial immunity, Dickson continued to perpetuate scientific racism in an attempt to justify the institution of slavery.

~Research conducted by Grace Cho

Note: P&SP is creating a timeline including Caldwell, Dickson, and other medical figures including Benjamin Rush, Josiah Nott, and Samuel Morton to help visualize how they inspired and propagated pseudoscientific ideas that continued to establish a concrete basis for the institution of slavery.