45 pages • 1 hour read
Harriet A. WashingtonMedical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2007A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Introduction-Part 1: “A Troubling Tradition”Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Introduction Summary
Harriet A. Washington opens her book, Medical Apartheid, with a description of two images of James Marion Sims—a 19th century surgeon celebrated for his development of cures for women’s diseases. First, Washington describes a statue honoring Sims located in New York City by the New York Academy of Medicine. Then, Washington describes a painting that depicts Sims right before conducting experimental surgery on his slave Betsy, without anesthetics or Betsy’s consent. For Washington, these contrasting images of Sims—“one benign, one malevolent” (2)—provides a framework for understanding the racial divide in American medicine which Medical Apartheid explores.
Washington argues that a “medical apartheid” (20) exists within America, with African Americans receiving far worse treatment and care than their white counterparts. African Americans suffer from higher rates of numerous diseases, including cancer and AIDS, and have far lower life expectancies than white Americans. Further, African Americans often suffer from mental disorders far more frequently than whites. African Americans frequently mistrust the largely-white US medical establishment, believing they receive lesser quality treatment or outright abuse at the hands of doctors. In turn, white doctors have frequently viewed blacks as “noncompliant”(16) patients who refuse to follow treatments due to baseless fears. Washington, however, argues that such fears are actually well-founded, and she aims to uncover the history of racist experiments in America that created such an 
