eans physician" does not appear, unless it be that he was equally
well known. His name, I have found recently, was James Derham. Dr.
Rush, in the American Museum for January, 1789, gave an account of Dr.
Derham, who was then a practitioner of medicine at New Orleans, and,
at the time the notice was written, was visiting in Philadelphia. He
was twenty-six years of age, married, member of the Episcopal Church,
and having a professional income of three thousand dollars a year. He
was born in Philadelphia a slave, and was taught to read and write,
and occasionally to compound medicines for his master, who was a
physician. On the death of his master he was sold to the surgeon of
the Sixteenth British regiment, and at the close of the war was sold
to Dr. Robert Dove, of New Orleans, who employed him as an assistant
in his business. He manifested such capacity, and so won the
confidence and friendship of his master, that he was liberated on easy
terms after two or three years' service, and entered into practice for
himself. "I have conversed with him," says Dr. Rush, "upon most of the
acute and epidemic diseases of the country where he lives. I expected
to have suggested some new medicines to him, but he suggested many
more to me. He is very modest and engaging in his manners. He speaks
French fluently, and has some knowledge of the Spanish."[6]

It was unfortunate that these incidents had not occurred early enough
to have come to the knowledge of Mr. Jefferson before he wrote his
"Notes on Virginia." These were precisely the kind of facts he was in
quest of. He probably would have used them, and have strengthened the
opinions he there expressed as to the intellectual capacity of the
negro race.

His "Notes on Virginia" were written in 1781-2. His condemnation of
slavery in that work is most emphatic. "The whole commerce between
master and slave," he says, "is a perpetual exercise of the most
boisterous passions; the most unremitting despotism on the one part,
and degrading submission on the other. Our children see this and learn
to imitate it.... The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the
lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller
slaves, gives loose to his worst of passions; and thus nursed,
educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, can not but be stamped by it
with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain
his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances. With wh