Welcome, fellow historico-medico aficionados, to another installment of , The Center for Education’s series on interesting, unusual, or thought-provoking accounts from the history of medicine. This month’s installment continues our recent examination of the achievements of people of color in medicine. Last month, guest writer Amanda wrote about and her monumental contributions to medical research. This time around, we are digging further back into the history of American medicine to focus briefly on a notable eighteenth century African American physician with ties to The College of Physicians of Philadelphia.
James Durham was born into slavery in Philadelphia on May 1, 1762. He changed hands between several enslavers during the early part of his life. Some of them happened to also be physicians, and Durham learned about medical practice. His last enslaver was Dr. Robert Dow, a physician in New Orleans who put Durham to work as his medical assistant.
In 1783, 20-year-old Durham purchased his freedom and began practicing medicine in New Orleans where he earned financial success and professional distinction. His ability to read and write and his fluency in three languages—English, French, and Spanish—likely served him well as a community doctor. In 1788, during a trip back to Philadelphia, Durham met Benjamin Rush, a prominent physician and statesman. In 1788, Rush was a former representative in the Continental Congress, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and a member of numerous reform organizations in Philadelphia. He was also one of the founders of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, which he helped establish alongside 23 other Philadelphia physicians the previous year. Rush, an ardent abolitionist, likely met Durham at a meeting of the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery. In a November 14, 1788, letter to the Society, Rush praised Durham’s expertise in disease treatment:
There is now in this city a black man of the name James Durham, a practitioner of physic, belonging to the Spanish settlement of New Orleans on the Mississippi…I have convened with him upon most of the acute and epidemic diseases of the country where he lives, and was pleased to find him perfectly acquainted with the modern simple mode of practice in those diseases. I expected to have suggested some new medicines to him, but he suggested many more to me. (Wynes 330).
The pair formed a professional relationship and maintained regular correspondence between 1789 and 1802.
Through their letters, Durham and Rush shared their knowledge on disease treatment and handling epidemics. Rush also shared Durham’s findings with prominent members of the Philadelphia medical community. In 1790, Rush presented Durham’s paper “An Account of the Putrid Sore Throat at New Orleans” to The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. Apparently, based on a letter from Durham dated March 30, 1790, the paper was not well received, although there are no details as to why. The two physicians were also on the front lines of yellow fever epidemics in their respective cities: Rush during the 1793 Philadelphia outbreak and Durham in New Orleans the following year.
Durham continued to practice in New Orleans until at least 1801; however, he longed to return to Philadelphia. In a letter to Rush dated May 20, 1800, he asked the Philadelphia physician if there were any work opportunities in the Quaker City, “Sir if you think I can get a living in Philadelphia[,] for I want to leave New Orleans and come live in the states, you will please write to me.” Changes in local policy in New Orleans likely also played a role in his desire to relocate. In 1801, the Spanish-run local government mandated all physicians practicing in the city had to have a medical degree, which Durham did not despite significant practical experience. Contemporary records mention a free Black man named “Derum,” whom local officials barred from medical practice save for treating throat ailments. Historian Charles Wynes argued in a 1979 article that “Derum” was likely James Durham. This is in part because of the similarity of the names (spelling was rather relative at the time) and Durham’s expertise in diseases of the throat as evidenced in the paper he sent to Rush to present at The College. A letter to Rush dated April 5, 1802, demonstrates Durham remained in New Orleans for at least another year, although it offers no insights whether he was still practicing medicine. Unfortunately, this letter is the last known correspondence between the two, and it is the last known record connected to Durham. Did he return to Philadelphia? Did he seek opportunities elsewhere? Did he die suddenly? We may never know.
On a side note, there are at least two images circulating online that are incorrectly attributed to Durham. One is a lithograph portrait of a man with white hair and a dark mustache while the other is a photograph of a heavyset man with a goatee. The former is actually an image of , a New York-based physician and abolitionist. The latter is , a 19th century Mississippi politician who was the first African American man to serve a full term in the United States Senate. For examples of both images associated with Durham, see this article from and this one from
Several sites also claim Durham was the first African American man to practice medicine in the United States. However, there are several issues with this bold assertion. First, given the limited source material, there's no evidence of Durham practicing in the United States. At the time, New Orleans was part of Spain and would not become part of the United States until 1803, when the U.S. acquired the city from France as part of the .
Second, medical practice and education were decentralized and informal at the time. Saying Durham was the “first Black physician” paints a narrow definition of “physician,” one that ignores the diverse array of medical practices beyond formalized medicine in the modern sense. There were no medical certification programs in the eighteenth century and most who practiced received little in the way of standardized training save for apprenticeship under another physician, as Durham did in his youth with Robert Dow. Given the generally loose credentials required to be a doctor in those times, it is not unlikely there were numerous African American people engaging in some manner of treatment or healing of the sick or injured.
None of this is to diminish Durham’s accomplishments. He was a noteworthy individual who achieved considerable success and acclaim in medicine while breaking into in the “mainstream” (in this context, the white, educated, upper class) medical community of the time. His accomplishments as a physician are a testament to the longtime contributions of African Americans to medicine.
Until next time, catch you on the strange side!
Sources:
America Comes Alive! May 3, 2012.
African American Registry.
Steve Graff, Penn Medicine News, February 27, 2015, accessed June 26, 2020,
Betty L. Plummer and James Durham, “Letters of James Durham to Benjamin Rush,” The Journal of Negro History 65, No. 3 (Summer 1980): 261-269.
Charles E. Wynes, The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 103, No. 3 (July 1979): 325-333.