Healers, Slaves and Surgeons: African-American and Western Medicine and their Impact in the Danish West Indies

Healers, Slaves and Surgeons: African-American and Western Medicine and their Impact in the Danish West Indies

Post Doctoral Research Fellow Bernhard M. Bierlich, Mag. Scient. (M.Sc.), Ph.D., The Wilberforce Institute for Study of Slavery and Emancipation, University of Hull

The project on the health of slaves in the former Danish West Indies is both innovative and based on declarations of support from the National Museum of Denmark, UNESCO and a research cooperation between The Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation (WISE) at the University of Hull and the Department of History at the Saxo Institute of the University of Copenhagen.

The project focuses generally on the slaves’ (“Afro-Caribbean”) viewpoints, and more specifically on the slaves’ forms of healing in relation to occurring diseases. Last, the project will examine the ways in which Afro-Caribbean and Danish and Western medicine interacted. 

The project draws on three groups of data – current research, sources contemporary with the historical period examined and Afro-Caribbean material - in its presentation of healing among the slaves. 

The project is a continuation of the brilliant cooperation with the international expert on slave trade and slavery, Professor Richardson of WISE and the Department of History at the University of Hull. The English book publishing company James Currey Publishers has also expressed its interest in publishing the study produced, as they se it as an exciting coupling of anthropology and history in relation to an interesting geographical area, that is, the former Danish West Indies.

Because this is a research and communications project, the articles produced and the book, which carefully describes and analyses relevant core areas, will function as important resources and reference works to provide guidance for the National Museum of Denmark, the Institute for Human Rights and the educational sector for presentation and dissemination of information on our colonial past in the tropics. In this connection, the project wishes to contribute to the development of suitable curricula for teaching the topic of Danish colonial history and the relationship between Danes and their slaves (cf. for instance, Leif Calundanns Larsen’s book Danskernes slaver, published in 2003, which has been written for teaching upper secondary school and Higher Preparatory Examination courses).