Drapetomania

Drapetomania was a psychiatric diagnosis proposed in 1851 by physician Samuel A. Cartwright, of the Louisiana Medical Association, to explain the tendency of black slaves to flee captivity. As such, drapetomania is an  example of scientific racism. The term derives from the Greek δραπετης (drapetes, "a runaway [slave]") + μανια (mania, "madness, frenzy").

The diagnosis appeared in a paper published in the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, where Dr. Cartwright argued that the tendency of slaves to run away from their captors was in fact a treatable medical disorder. His feeling was that with "proper medical advice, strictly followed, this troublesome practice that many Negroes have of running away can be almost entirely prevented."

In the case of slaves "sulky and dissatisfied without cause"—a warning sign of imminent flight—Cartwright proposed "whipping the devil out of them" as a "preventative measure."

Cartwright also described another disorder, Dysaethesia Aethiopica, "called by overseers 'rascality'" which "is much more prevalent among free negroes living in clusters by themselves, than among slaves on our plantations, and attacks only such slaves as live like free negroes in regard to diet, drinks, exercise, etc."—indeed, according to Cartwright, "nearly all [free negroes] are more or less afflicted with it, that have not got some white person to direct and to take care of them." The symptoms described were various and apparently unconnected, including "lesions of the body discoverable to the medical observer, which are always present and sufficient to account for the symptoms":