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Night Doctors, also known as night riders, night witches, Ku Klux doctors, and student doctors are bogeymen of African American folklore who emerged from the realities of grave robbing, medical experimentation, and intimidation rumors spread by Southern whites to prevent workers from leaving for the North. African American folklore spoke about white doctors that would steal, kill, dissect and run different experiments, which were referred to as “Night Doctors”.〔Harris, Y., Gorelick, P.B., Samuels, P., and Bempong, I. (1996). Why African Americans may not be participating in clinical trials. J Natl Med Assoc 88, 630–634.〕 These tales are difficult to verify, but what has been said is that white slave owners told African Americans about the tortures performed by “Night Doctors” to prevent freed slaves from moving to the North.〔Halperin, E.C. (2007). The poor, the Black, and the marginalized as the source of cadavers in United States anatomical education. Clinical Anatomy 20, 489–495.〕 In order to further emphasize the rumors, white owners would dress in white sheets to represent kidnappers. They wandered the African American communities to make them believe that they would be abducted, taken to medical facilities and killed.〔 To many African Americans these "night doctors" weren't just fictions used as scare tactics; they were real life. A poem was created from the fears of the African Americans that applied more realism to the Night Doctor myths:〔Savitt, T.L. (1982). The Use of Blacks for Medical Experimentation and Demonstration in the Old South. The Journal of Southern History 48, 331–348.〕
==Grave robbers== In the early 19th century, most states made grave robbing a crime, but African Americans were powerless and voiceless so they were unable to put up resistance against grave robberies.〔Humphrey, D.C. (1973). Dissection and discrimination: the social origins of cadavers in America, 1760-1915. Bull N Y Acad Med 49, 819–827.〕 It was more risky for doctors to run dissections on white people than blacks, but defenseless poor whites were also used especially when there was a great abundance of them. Body snatching increased during the post-Revolutionary period in New York due to the impact of medical students performing dissections rather than observing professors. Laws were passed after the exposure of the truth by newspapers and the rapid increase of grave robbers. For example, Pennsylvania passed a law requiring public officials to turn in unclaimed bodies to the state anatomy board, in order to put a stop to the grave robberies.〔 There resulted to be people dedicated in robbing graves of blacks and poor whites and sold the cadavers to medical schools.〔Semmes, C.E. (1996). Medical Experimentation. In Racism,Health,and Post-Industrialism: A Theory of African American Health, (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers), p. 110.〕 African Americans were the main source of cadavers through the end of the civil war.〔Bankole, Katherine Kemi. Slavery and medicine: enslavement and medical practices in antebellum Louisiana. New York: Taylor & Francis, 1998.〕 Many municipalities and states had laws against grave robbing, so it was only practiced on those who were unprotected by the law. This law was flouted by medical schools who often bragged about the ease of obtaining cadavers from the slave and free black population, as shown in an 1824 advertisement for the Medical College of South Carolina:〔The Philadelphia Journal of the Medical and Physical Sciences, Volume 8 By John Davidson Godman, Isaac Hays〕
Excavations at the Medical College of Georgia in 1989 yielded more than 9,000 bones, mainly from working class individuals. Approximately 80% of those were from African Americans.〔Halperin, Edward C. The Poor, the Black, and the Marginalized as Sources of Cadavers in United States Anatomical Education. Clinical Anatomy, 20(5), p 489-495〕 In addition to being the majority of cadavers, many Southern teaching hospitals would only perform new surgical techniques and demonstrations on African-American patients.〔Doty, Leilani. "Renewing Trust in Regular(Allopathic) Medicine and Research" SELAM International Newsletter. 9(1), 2007.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Night Doctors」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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