I’ll admit that I’d never heard of the term Draptomania until I watched CSA: The Confederate States of America (If you’ve never heard of that movie, it’s a must see). Draptomania is an mental illness created by noted physician Louisiana Samuel A. Cartwright to explain why black slaves would run away from their owners. The fact that he thought to frame the need for freedom in terms of mental illness and not a natural phenomenon is beyond me. Institutionalized racism is a hell of a thing, huh.

The good people at Wikipedia have this to say…

“Cartwright described the disorder — which, he said, was “unknown to our medical authorities, although its diagnostic symptom, the absconding from service, is well known to our planters and overseers” — in a paper delivered before the Medical Association of Louisiana that was widely reprinted. He stated that the malady was a consequence of masters who “made themselves too familiar with [slaves], treating them as equals. In Diseases and Pecularities of the Negro Race, Cartwright writes that the Bible calls for the slave to be submissive to his master, and by doing so, the slave will have no desire to run away. In addition to identifying drapetomania, Cartwright prescribed a remedy to cure the malady. His feeling was that with “proper medical advice, strictly followed, this troublesome practice that many Negroes have of running away can be almost entirely prevented.” In the case of slaves “sulky and dissatisfied without cause” — a warning sign of imminent flight — Cartwright prescribed “whipping the devil out of them” as a “preventative measure.”"

I think I’ll call in sick tomorrow.  I have a touch of draptomania.