Sometimes monsters take on the most unlikely form. Today we talk about the night doctor, a shadowy medical menace that appears in Black folklore at the beginning of the 20th century. Fear of the night doctor reflected a very real history of racist medical abuse in the United States.

 CONTENT WARNING: this episode contains discussions about dissections and unethical medical experiments that some may find disturbing.

References:

Night Riders in Black Folk History
By Gladys-Marie Fry

Medical Apartheid
By Harriet A. Washington

Bodies in the Basement: The Forgotten Stolen Bones of America's Medical Schools
By Dolly Stolze

Night Doctors
By Colin Dickey

Fear Of The Dark: The Night Doctors In Folk Belief And Historical Reality
By Mark Laskey

Support the show