DRAPETOMANIA, OR THE DISEASE CAUSING NEGROES TO RUN AWAY. It is unknown to our medical authorities, although its diagnostic symptom, the absconding from service, is well known to our planters and ...

In 1851, physician Samuel Cartwright came up with a false mental illness, drapetomania, to explain enslaved people's desire for freedom and declared slaves mentally ill for running away.

In 2004, I was asked to contribute to the Academy of Ideas Letters on Liberty series on the subject of mental health.

One is his newly-discovered "Drapetomania," a disease which causes slaves to run away; the other, "Dysaethesia Aethiopica," a disease causing "rascality" in black people free and enslaved.