“The SOLE OBJECT Of the faculty in the establishment of such an institution being to promote the interest of Medical Education within their native State and City.”

In the “Charleston (South Carolina) Mercury” of October 12, 1838, we find an advertisement of half a column, by a Dr. T. Stillman, setting forth the merits of another ‘Medical Infirmary,’ under his own special supervision, at No. 110 Church street, Charleston.  The doctor, after inveighing loudly against ‘men totally ignorant of medical science,’ who flood the country with quack nostrums backed up by ’fabricated proofs of miraculous cures,’ proceeds to enumerate the diseases to which his ‘Infirmary’ is open, and to which his practice will be mainly confined.  Appreciating the importance of ‘interesting cases,’ as a stock in trade, on which to commence his experiments, he copies the example of the medical professors, and advertises for them.  But, either from a keener sense of justice, or more generosity, or greater confidence in his skill, or for some other reason, he proposes to buy up an assortment of damaged negroes, given over, as incurable, by others, and to make such his ‘interesting cases,’ instead of experimenting on those who are the ‘property’ of others.

Dr. Stillman closes his advertisement with the following notice:—­

“To PLANTERS AND OTHERS.—­Wanted fifty negroes.  Any person having sick negroes, considered incurable by their respective physicians, and wishing to dispose of them, Dr. S. will pay cash for negroes affected with scrofula or king’s evil, confirmed hypocondriasm, apoplexy, diseases of the liver, kidneys, spleen, stomach and intestines, bladder and its appendages, diarrhea, dysentery, &c.  The highest cash price will be paid on application as above.”

The absolute barbarism of a ‘public opinion’ which not only tolerates, but produces such advertisements as this, was outdone by nothing in the dark ages.  If the reader has a heart of flesh, he can feel it without help, and if he has not, comment will not create it.  The total indifference of slaveholders to such a cold blooded proposition, their utter unconsciousness of the paralysis of heart, and death of sympathy, and every feeling of common humanity for the slave, which it reveals, is enough, of itself to show that the tendency of the spirit of slaveholding is, to kill in the soul whatever it touches.  It has no eyes to see, nor ears to hear, nor mind to understand, nor heart to feel for its victims as human beings.  To show that the above indication of the savage state is not an index of individual feeling, but of ‘public opinion,’ it is sufficient to say, that it appears to be a standing advertisement in the Charleston Mercury, the leading political paper of South Carolina, the organ of the Honorables John C. Calhoun, Robert Barnwell Rhett, Hugh S. Legare, and others regarded as the elite of her statesmen and literati.  Besides, candidates for popular