“The Candles Would Not Burn”: African-Born Medical Practitioners, Slaving Ship Medicine, and Spaces of Healing

African-born men, laboring on the dozens of nimble slaving ships engaged in the clandestine trade of the early 19^thcentury which navigated from Bahia, Brazil to the Bight of Benin, comprised nearly 90 percent of all medical personnel. Most of these medical practitioners were enslaved, some freed. The majority were classified by ship captains as barbers and sangradores (bloodletters). Like all seamen, labor propelled barbers and sangradores across vast distances, depositing them in ports around the Atlantic world as they sought medicines to heal and African captives to assess for purchase. But unlike other maritime workers, they performed their labor in the bowls of the epidemiologically perilous slaving ship. As one British surgeon reported, in the cargo holds in which captains forcibly held enslaved individuals, conditions were so oppressive and dangerous that “the candles would not burn.” Despite being tasked with maintaining the well-being and thus commercial value of enslaved individuals, barbers and sangradores exercised little control over the factors that most influenced the health of captives—including the quality and quantity of shipboard rations, space allotted to each captive below decks, health before boarding ships, and voyage length. This paper explores the conditions of such labor, examining how and why African-born men came to predominate slaving ship medicine, as well as how the material and spatial realities of their work shaped their healing practice.