“Lots of doctoring, with great success”: Healthcare within the Port Royal Experiment and the Work of Laura M. Towne

• Main Author: Antje Dallmann
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: European Association for American Studies 2015-03-01
• Series: European Journal of American Studies
• Subjects: African American culture; African American emancipation; Civil War; cleanliness; discourse of authority; Discursive sites
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/ejas/10668

In 1862, Laura M. Towne – abolitionist, teacher, educator, and trained homeopath – joined the Port Royal Experiment, a project initiated by Northern benevolent societies to provide education and relief for former slaves on the South Carolina Sea Islands, which had been occupied by Union troops in late 1861. On the Sea Islands as well as in broader Northern culture, healthcare for freedpeople – and freedpeople’s health – soon became controversial topics. This article traces how Towne as homeopathic practitioner uses medical tropes in autobiographic documents intended for publication or circulation in the North to increase her own authority within a wartime discourse and how, at the same time, she avoids reflection about medical crises.