Albert Deutsch

The First U.S. Census of the Insane (1840) and Its Use as Pro-Slavery Propaganda

Close to 100 years after the 1840 Census was published, Professor Albert Deutsch sought to refute the statistical findings. He concluded that the findings of excessively high rates of insanity within the black population based on geographic residence were a politically-based effort to sustain disingenuous southern arguments designed to reinstitute the practice of slavery that had been banned in 1801.

 

 

Source: Reprinted from Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Vol. XV, No. 5, May 1944