Sick by Design Volume One: Chains and Contagion: Disease, Healing, and Survival in the Slavery and Reconstruction Era (Sick by Design: A History of Plague, Power, and Healing in Black America)

Sick by Design: Volume One: Chains and Contagion exposes the hidden medical history of Black survival during slavery and Reconstruction.This is not a general history book.This is a record of what people actually did to stay alive.Inside these pages, you will find the diseases that shaped entire generations—smallpox, yellow fever, cholera, malaria, parasites—and the real remedies used in the quarters, fields, and kitchens to fight them.You will learn:How enslaved Africans introduced early inoculation practices that influenced modern medicineWhy parasites, contaminated water, and malnutrition became silent epidemics in the SouthThe exact herbs, roots, and food-based remedies used to treat infection, fever, and intestinal diseaseHow plants like elderberry, wormseed, willow bark, and charcoal were used with precision—not guessworkThe biological logic behind ancestral healing methods that modern science is only now confirmingThis book connects history, biology, and survival strategy into one system.It shows that what was dismissed as “folk medicine” was often applied pharmacology under pressure.This is Volume One in a larger series documenting African American medical knowledge across eras.Because this wasn’t random.This was survival. Read more