Dysaesthesia aethiopica

Dysaesthesia aethiopica was an alleged mental illness described in 1851 by the American physician Samuel A. Cartwright, who offered it as an explanation for what he called laziness among enslaved people. Its name meant Ethiopian bad feeling or black bad feeling. Cartwright applied it only to African Americans and described partial insensitivity of the skin and a dullness of the mind, along with rough, thick skin. He attributed it to blood deprived of oxygen through idleness or poor diet, and proposed forced labor in the sun as its cure. Today it is not recognized as a disease and is regarded as pseudoscience and part of the structure of scientific racism. The atlas records it as a disputed and discredited historical diagnosis, not as a real disorder or as medical advice.