Night Doctors Dbq

Night doctors and grave robbers had a significant yet tragic part in history by having consent from white doctors to steal bodies from graves and the streets. Many southern Doctors made medical advancements on slaves dead or alive. Night doctors caused a decrease in the economy, taking bodies out of graves without consent. Night doctors are part of the black folk history, so many whites used night doctors as a form of punishment or blackmail. Night Doctors snatched African Americans off the streets and gave these people or bodies to doctors to analyze. Night Doctors had many practices, such as their dressing, similar to the KKK, so several researchers believe they started the KKK. However, if doctors couldn’t steal enought bodies they’d

ask night doctors. If they couldn’t supply the doctors grave robbers dug up bodies to have bodies for medical research and analysis.
Some researchers say that there was a positive side to night doctors. If doctors were not able to stock enough bodies for research,“Individuals who died at the hospital—and thus away from their families—were easier to seize for dissection,.. (Paris Review).”, it was up to night doctors to bring back people for medical study. If these night doctors that white doctors hired, were not able to find african americans to snatch, there would have been no medical advancements in history. In the article, “ Night Doctors” written by Colin Dickey, it explains that, “without cadavers, there could be no medical school ( Paris Review).” Night doctors had a dreadful history however there could some advantages to night doctors and grave robbers.
Night Doctors have a horrible past, it started when doctors would use prisoners or patients. They were severely persistent, “doctors at the time were extremely ardent about their work and were willing to go to great lengths to get the human remains they needed to conduct their research (?). ” Doctors took much pride in their research during this time, they would do anything to find a discovery in the medical field. Doctors were so stubborn that they, “ saw no harm in taking bodies from grave sites and yet others who preserved their consciences by ignoring the moral implications of accepting these bodies completely (?).” Doctors didn’t believe that they even needed permission from patients, they considered it as a payment for giving the patients treatments. Doctors had no empathy for the patients.
In the south, many Southern doctors had performed on slaves, torturing them alive and experimenting on bodies. According to …, “They would silence them by pouring molten wax into their mouths and nostrils (?).”. Slaves already had no consent in anything in their life, and many, “Southern doctors made the majority of their income from operating on slaves; in such transactions, the plantation master was the client, not the patient him or herself (?).”. The Southern doctors usually never had patients to work with, so the best next thing was to operate on slaves. This offered more areas to research, which is why the, “South regularly relied on the bodies of slaves as a means to practice their craft, often advertising their need for “interesting” conditions (?).”. Sometimes the southern doctors didn’t practice on only slaves, but they also practiced on, “ the corpses of immigrants, the indigent, the insane, and other marginal groups…(?).”. Many night doctors had begun their little group because many doctors weren’t able to keep up the demand on bodies to research on.
At the beginning of the night doctors “invasion”, the economy influenced night doctors and was affected by the night doctors. Based off the article, … it says, “The Night Riders began as the result of economic grievance the men believed they were striking at the cotton co-ops (?).”. So after the Night Riders were found and many african americans were snatched the economy started decreasing. The “African Americans were expected to offer cheap labor to drive an economy that benefited whites (?).”, african americans were the soil to the economy, they made the economy grow. However once the black community started to decrease, the economy started to crash. The african americans that were taken were usually the ones who supported the economy, so when they were seized it made a huge impact on the economy.
As stated earlier in the paper, night doctors started from the white doctors who didn’t have patients or corpses to regularly work on. Doctors first started using bodies that passed away at the hospital before the family could take ownership of them. Doctors would have to solve this problem, “which meant that medical schools regularly plundered untended cemeteries for fresh bodies (?).” This job was taken up by grave robbers who regularly invaded cemeteries for fresh bodies. As grave robberies started becoming more popular many people became more conscious of where they buried their loved ones. The whites would, “[resort] to elaborate means to ensure their graves would not be violated; the mortsafe, an iron cage secured over one’s grave to discourage theft (?). ”. Once the whites figured out a way to prevent their families bodies taken, that left many slaves and poor peoples graves at more risk. An option that many slaves resorted to was to be, “buried in “toothpicks”: plain pine boxes that were loosely covered with only the barest layer of dirt, allowing for easy plundering when the sun went down (?).”. Grave robbers were famous for always taking african american bodies so that doctors could conduct research and analyze the bodies.
Grave robbers were factually proven, there are records of people who have been stolen from or were the grave robbers themselves.

However, night doctors were believed to be black folklore, it made such as impact in the black community that, “the night doctors weren’t just getting bodies for the medical profession, they were controlling a population (?).”. They dictated who did what and as time went on less and less people began to believe in the night doctors and only considered it a story. So white owners and black parents used this to their advantage, parents would use the night riders as a punishment. The white owners spread rumors of night riders, “the purpose of spreading the night-doctor rumors had to do with restricting mobility to maintain economic control of former slave labor (?).”. Not only did the night doctor rumor help control the economy, but it maintained control over the slaves in the South. The white owners made sure that slaves would be to scared to run away from plantations. “the night doctors were employed as psychological warfare explicitly to discourage the Great Migration and to maintain a stable agrarian work force in the South (?).”. Night Doctors were extremely feared, folklore who snatched african americans. Who went to graves to dig up bodies to help the medical field and inflict

fear.
Night Riders and grave robbers had a very powerful and frightful history by impacting the economy, digging and snatching people off the streets, and creating a legacy of night doctors.