ABSTRACT
Dr. Samuel Cartwright believed that it was impossible that enslavement labor could have been harmful to Africans. Few scholarly enterprises have discussed the connection between the labor of enslaved Africans and their need for medical health care. Much of the labor performed by enslaved Africans represented major risk factors. Africans who worked in the fields were often required to perform arduous and dangerous labors that White slaveowners and European immigrant laborers shunned. In addition to the inherent dangers of agricultural labor, wet nursing, forced breeding, and concubinage were labors which created additional medical health risks for enslaved African women. African women who worked in the sugar or cotton fields often worked up to childbirth. In addition to the agricultural and domestic labor tasks, enslaved African women were required to work as concubines in the New Orleans slave market.
