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South Carolina Medical College student surgeons "practice" on patients in "Coloured Wards."

1850s

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In the late 1850s, surgical cases involving Black people are admitted to the "Coloured Wards," and are reserved for the exclusive use of student doctors while the South Carolina Medical College is in session. "Black fear of medical schools and dissection inevitably carried over into the postbellum period, when whites, as a means of maintaining control over freedmen, reinforced the idea of 'night-doctors' who stole, killed, and then dissected Black people" (Savitt, 1982).