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A circular drawing of Brown, a Black man with kinky hair and a beard, wearing a suit.
John Brown depicted in his autobiography (London, 1955). (Photo: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)

John Brown is experimented on to "prove" medical myths about the "thickness" of Black skin.

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John Brown depicted in his autobiography (London, 1955). (Photo: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)

John Brown, a Black man enslaved on a Baldwin County, Georgia plantation in the 1820s and ’30s, is "lent" to physician Dr. Thomas Hamilton. For over 9 months, Hamilton uses a violent blistering technique on John Brown's body to test how deep Black skin goes, believing it is thicker than white skin. Hamilton writes up his experiments and shares them with the Medical Academy of Georgia.