Edward Jarvis, M.D.

Insanity Among the Coloured Population of the Free States (1844)

Dr. Jarvis expressed grave concern that the statistics used to draw inferences in 1840 were seriously flawed. He found that the census had grossly overestimated the impact that race had on admission to asylums in northern states and underestimated their numbers in southern states.

He noted in his 1844 publication, Insanity Among the Colored Population of the Free States, "throughout the civilized world, the statement has gone forth, that according to the experience of the United States, including a slave population of near two and a half millions, and a free coloured population in the Northern States of near two hundred thousand, slavery is more than ten-fold more favorable to mental health than freedom."

 

Image of Edward Jarvis, as pictured on the frontispiece to MEMORIAL OF EDWARD JARVIS by Robert W. Wood, Boston: T. R. Marvin and Son, 1885