It was inevitable that the prevailing practice of conjuration in Africa should be found among Negroes after they had been transferred to the new continent.  The conjure man was well known in every slave community.  He generally turned his art, however, to malevolent rather than benevolent uses; but this was not always the case.  Not infrequently these medicine men gained such wide celebrity among their own race as to attract the attention of the whites.  As early as 1792 a Negro by the name of Cesar[1] had gained such distinction for his curative knowledge of roots and herbs that the Assembly of South Carolina purchased his freedom and gave him an annuity of one hundred pounds.

That slaves not infrequently held high rank among their own race as professional men may be seen from the advertisements of colonial days.  A runaway Negro named Simon was in 1740 advertised in The Pennsylvania Gazette[2] as being able to “bleed and draw teeth” and “pretending to be a great doctor among his people.”  Referring in 1797 to a fugitive slave of Charleston, South Carolina, The City Gazette and Daily Advertiser[3] said:  “He passes for a Doctor among people of his color and it is supposed practices in that capacity about town.”  The contact of such practitioners with the white race was due to the fact that the profession of the barber was at one time united with that of the physician.  The practice of phlebotomy was considered an essential part of the doctor’s work.  As the Negro early became a barber and the profession was united with that of the physician, it is natural to suppose that he too would assume the latter function.  That phlebotomy was considered an essential part of the practice of the medicine is seen from the fact that it was practiced upon George Washington in his last illness.  An instance of this sort of professional development among the Negroes appears in the case of the barber, Joseph Ferguson.  Prior to 1861 he lived in Richmond, Virginia, uniting the three occupations of leecher, cupper, and barber.  This led to his taking up the study of medicine in Michigan, where he graduated and practiced for many years.

The first regularly recognized Negro physician, of whom there is a complete record, was James Derham, of New Orleans.  He was born in Philadelphia in 1762, where he was taught to read and write, and instructed in the principles of Christianity.  When a boy he was transferred by his master to Dr. John Kearsley, Jr., who employed him occasionally to compound medicines, and to perform some of the more humble acts of attention to his patients.  Upon the death of Dr. Kearsley, he became (after passing through several hands) the property of Dr. George West, surgeon to the Sixteenth British Regiment, under whom, during the Revolutionary War, he performed many of the menial duties of the medical profession.  At the close of the war, he was sold by Dr. West to Dr. Robert Dove at New Orleans, who employed him as an assistant in his business,