Plants and Lancets in Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Lynne Feeley’s paper on Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl identifies the importance of local plant matter as materia medica. Feeley begins with the observation that when Jacobs falls ill in the garret... [ view full abstract ]

Lynne Feeley’s paper on Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl identifies the importance of local plant matter as materia medica. Feeley begins with the observation that when Jacobs falls ill in the garret in Incidents, a Thomsonian doctor heals her. Feeley argues that this Thomsonian doctor’s appearance is extraordinary because Jacob’s owner, John Norcom, was himself a physician who studied under Benjamin Rush. Whereas Rush emphasized depletive and purgative methods, so called ‘empiriks’ like Samuel Thomson used plants instead of the lancet to heal. Feeley reads Jacobs’ reference to Thomsonian methods as an alternative to Norcom’s view that the natural world was composed of so many illness-inducing irritants. Feeley concludes that the Thomsonian perspective provided Jacobs with an oppositional environmental consciousness that fosters a vision of a vibrant, interconnected natural world. Moreover, she demonstrates that this epistemology continues to serve as the conceptual bedrock of climate justice today.