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The article makes gripping use of the narrative format, as well as presents historical data to support its contention that there was a consistent program of medical experimentation on African-Americans during the antebellum period. The article opens with an account of one 'John Brown,' a slave who was used by a certain 'Doctor Hamilton' to test cures the quack doctor wished to use on Brown's master. The treatments were more abuse than curative, with dubious medical legitimacy. Not only were slaves used in experimentation, but they were valued so little because of their race that so-called scientists felt little compunction about subjecting them to experiments of almost no medical value.

In the 19th century, there was no standard ethical protocol regarding the ethics of experimentation (Washington 2008: 55). "The experimental abuse of African-Americans was not a cultural anomaly; it simply mirrored…the economic, social and health abuses that the larger society perpetuated against people of color (Washington 2008: 56). Slaves were considered ideal 'test subjects' on which to perform everything from experimental surgeries to test cures for malaria. Although Brown's personal account opens up the piece, accounts of whites who describe matter-of-factly their use of blacks as experimental subjects are also marshaled in support of this contention. In no less than a publication than the Southern Medical and Surgical Journal, over half the articles described experiments upon blacks, who were also overrepresented in medical and surgical wards, primarily because of their 'usefulness' in experimentation. Often, procedures were performed without anesthesia. The logic of racism allowed a kind of perverse mental paradox -- on one hand, blacks were 'necessary' to use in experiments because they were human beings and were thus ideal to test out new remedies upon. On the other hand, they were also seen as innately inferior to whites and supposedly less susceptible to pain and thus could be treated cruelly in ways whites could not tolerate (Washington 2008: 58).

Even by the experimenter's own contemporary standards, many of the experiments were unscientific and when unsuccessful, blacks were blamed (such as for the high rates of infant mortality and disease caused by the conditions under which slaves were forced to live). Washington implies, however, that this blame of African-Americans for their medical problems on character flaws, versus social conditions and poor epidemiology and a lack of scientific rigor, is not something confined to the long past but can even be seen in the thinking of many scientists and public health officials today in issues where race and medicine intersect.