A Peculiar Population: The Nutrition, Health, and Mortality of American Slaves from Childhood to Maturity

Abstract

The debate over the health and nutrition of slaves has focused on the typical working adult. Height and mortality data, however, indicate that the greatest systemativ variation in health and nutrition occured by age. Nourishment was exceedingly poor for slave childrenm but workers were remarkably well fed. The unusayal growth-by-age profile for slaves has implications for views on the postwar economic fortunes of blacks, the interpretation of findings of other height studies, and conceptions of slaveowner decision making, the slave family, and the slave personality.

The poor, the Black, and the marginalized as the source of cadavers in United States anatomical education

“…Osteomyelitis, tuberculosis, and an occasional healed fracture were seen less frequently (Harrington, 1997). Bone mineral analysis indicated a diet of meat, cereal grains, green vegetables, and fish and shell fish-not surprising because of Augusta's proximity to the Savannah River and Atlantic Ocean (Steckel, 1986;Dillingham, 1997).…”

Hijos de esclavas en Córdoba (Argentina). Una aproximación al ciclo reproductivo a partir de actas de bautismo

“…Un conocido trabajo cuantitativo realizado por Fogel y Engerman (1979) a través de documentos censales y otros datos, sostiene que los esclavos de plantaciones de algodón de Estados Unidos tenían dietas calóri-ca y nutricionalmente adecuadas dado que los dueños evitaban la enfermedad y la desnutrición para aumentar su rendimiento y que su nivel era equivalente al de trabajadores blancos de la épo-ca. Más adelante Steckel (1986), con datos físi-cos y otros indicadores ecológicos concluyó que los esclavos americanos en su temprana infancia tenían un estado nutricional asimilable al de los más bajos de las poblaciones estudiadas por los auxólogos. Sin embargo, dado que a partir de los 10 años la situación se revierte y llegan a los estándares modernos de peso, indicaría que mientras su nutrición era pobre al inicio eran bien alimentados cuando se acercaban a la edad de trabajar.…”

Fluctuations in a Dreadful Childhood: Synthetic Longitudinal Height Data, Relative Prices and Weather in the Short-Term Health of American Slaves

“…9 Overwhelmingly past and present populations that had very small children also had very small adults. 10 The slave pattern has numerous implications, not only for economic history and the understanding of the slave regime, but for biological processes of growth that interest anthropologists, human biologists, and nutritionists. The unusual pattern of physical growth strongly suggests that planters deliberately managed the health of slave children.…”