Melancholia, Slavery, and Racial Pathology in Eighteenth-Century Cuba

Abstract

Between February of 1797 and July of 1798, Francisco Barrera y Domingo, a Spanish surgeon, wrote an extensive treatise on slave medicine in the Caribbean. Entitled Reflexiones Historico Fisico Naturales Medico Quirurgicas, this 894-page manuscript accounts for eighteen years of its author's professional practice in the region. It provides a clear picture of daily life in the sugar plantations as seen through the eyes of a modest surgeon, thus presenting us with an opportunity to explore the ideological and intellectual universe of this “invisible” category of colonial practitioners. Despite its importance, Barrera's Reflexiones remains almost unknown. Only a handful of scholars have even acknowledged the existence of the volume and no systematic analysis of its content is available in English.