2026/03/07 by Matthew Daniel Eddy · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Medicine · Psychology · #Doctor–patient relationship #Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices #Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes #Historical and Scientific Studies #Lock (firearm) #Medical ethics #Medical history #Moral dilemma #Morality #Notice
paper · doi:10.1093/ahr/rhag035
openalex publication_date 2026/03/07 · openalex created_date 2026/07/26 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/26
Abstract In the summer of 1836, the clinicians of Glasgow’s Lock Hospital treated the impoverished female patients with a painful new drug. The negative impact of these experiments on the women remained relatively unnoticed until the newly appointed African American physician James McCune Smith (1812–1865) discovered the situation and exposed the abuse in print, making him the first Black author known to have published an article in a scientific journal. Using new methods developed by media historians, this article reveals why McCune Smith’s moral vision, born in his previous experiences with discrimination, led him not only to notice the mistreatment but to proactively transform the hospital’s paper-based information system into a moral machine that spoke to the concerns of patients. Instead of treating data technologies as neutral objects that mechanically churned out numbers or reports, McCune Smith recognized that the morality of the machine was driven by the values of the physicians and surgeons—the datafiers—who created and operated it. This astute recognition empowered him to become an imaginative activist whose seemingly small challenge to the British health establishment represents an important episode in the interrelated history and ethics of data science, health statistics, and medical activism.