While the doctors were giving treatments, their work area was not very sanitary and that caused a high risk of infection. Also, most of the doctors had no idea what they were doing because they had no formal education of medicine. In the 1800s most of the medicine practiced was based off of a logical guess then prayers to get better. Soon the sickness was only identified by its symptoms rather than the sickness itself. Most treatments went straight to bleeding, and sometimes the given medicine could lead to mercury poisoning, (Patients and Poisons). So, while the doctors would have trial and error from the people who could afford them, they rarely visited any slaves. Only the slave owners could try to reach out for a doctor and it was costly towards them because doctors were not cheap. From the fact that the doctors rarely visited slaves, the slaves in the early nineteenth century started practicing
While the doctors were giving treatments, their work area was not very sanitary and that caused a high risk of infection. Also, most of the doctors had no idea what they were doing because they had no formal education of medicine. In the 1800s most of the medicine practiced was based off of a logical guess then prayers to get better. Soon the sickness was only identified by its symptoms rather than the sickness itself. Most treatments went straight to bleeding, and sometimes the given medicine could lead to mercury poisoning, (Patients and Poisons). So, while the doctors would have trial and error from the people who could afford them, they rarely visited any slaves. Only the slave owners could try to reach out for a doctor and it was costly towards them because doctors were not cheap. From the fact that the doctors rarely visited slaves, the slaves in the early nineteenth century started practicing