Drapetomania

In an article titled "ADD as a Social Invention," Thomas Armstrong introduced me to the term "drapetomania":

In 1851, a Louisiana physician and American Medical Association member, Samuel A. Cartwright, published a paper in the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal wherein he described a new medical disorder he had recently identified. He called it drapetomania (from drapeto, meaning "to flee," and mania, an obsession), and used it to describe a condition he felt was prevalent in runaway slaves. Dr. Cartwright felt that with "proper medical advice, strictly followed, this troublesome practice that many negroes have of running away can be almost entirely prevented."

Just when you think you can't be surprised, along comes another bit of information sure to make your eyes pop out of your head. Author Vanessa Jackson provides some other examples of labeling reactions to oppression and poverty among African Americans as biological diseases.

Although, really, I don't know why I should be surprised. Throughout the Victorian era, medical science held that intellectual activity was disruptive to women's menstrual cycles and impaired fertility. Ever wonder why hysteria and hysterectomy have the same root? According to the obstetrician of the late 1800's, having a uterus could make you insane, unless you kept to strictly feminine behavior.

When women were forced to give up the respect, dignity, and jobs they had held during World War II and return to 900-sq-ft ranch homes to raise 4 children and make digusting desserts involving jello, some were diagnosed with frigidity and mental illness and doped up on Valium.

In this context, it's easier to believe that ADD or ADHD is a fabricated illness, used to blame the individual in order to avoid questioning the system. Says pediatrician Peter Breggin:

When I was asked by the National Institutes of Health to be a scientific discussant on the effects of these drugs at a conference they held, I reviewed the important literature, and I found that when animals are given them, they stop playing; they stop being curious; they stop socializing; they stop trying to escape. Ritalin makes good caged animals; we're making good caged kids.

I wish I thought that was hyperbole.