While reading Kindred by Octavia E. Butler, the subject of slavery in America was presented to me in a way that I had never known before. By examining how Butler highlights the impact of antebellum medicine on slavery and comparing it to modern medicine of that era, we can see how the reader is able to see the brutality and The profound impact of slavery on history through an effective and relevant approach. lens. Before traveling back in time to the height of slavery in the 1800s, Dana, like us, had the opportunity to experience the drastic advances in medicine while in what was for her today, in the late 1970s. As readers, knowing what modern medicine looks like, we were able to connect with Dana as she experimented, in the 1800s, with distinctly different forms of medicine. lower. Although all walks of life were affected by this, the lack of medical knowledge at this time greatly affected the plantations and especially the slaves. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay In part five of The Storm, Dana is exposed to the barbaric methods of medicine practiced in the 1800s when Alice tells her how two of her children had died since she was last there. “What did they die of?” I asked. 'Fevers. The doctor came to bleed and purge them, but they still died. “He bled and purged the babies?” “There were two and three of them. He said it would bring down the fever. And that's what happened. But they… they died anyway” (210). Dana was appalled that a doctor would do this to infants as a treatment for fever. Something like this would be unheard of today, but it shows how primitive medical practices were, especially on slaves, compared to Dana's current time. Butler uses this scene to show how slaves were affected by medical care. procedures used during this period. For a mother to have to watch a doctor bleed and purge her babies as a last resort to save their lives would be devastating, especially since she had no choice. Dana even suggested that Alice shouldn't have let the doctors anywhere near her babies, but since they were also Rufus' children, she had no say in the matter. Being a slave and having her children fathered by the man who owned her meant that she had no control over the decisions made regarding her children, even when it came to life and death. Since both Dana and the reader understand the importance of modern medicine in people's daily lives, this allows the reader to better understand and connect to what Dana was going through while Butler was bringing these medieval forms of medicine to the forefront. When Rufus became very ill in the third part of The Storm, Tom Weylin insisted that Dana heal him and even went so far as to threaten his life if Rufus were to die. “What are these mosquitoes that give people fever? » he asked. “Maybe we can forget about this,” I said. “It doesn’t look like malaria. He suffers a lot. I think we should go see the doctor’” (205). It was an exchange Dana and Tom had while standing next to Rufus as he lay in agony. Dana is given the task of curing a very intense and life-threatening illness that she doesn't even know what it actually is. Tom is stubborn enough to not even want a doctor.