The Worker's Cauldron
A podcast about the cultural politics of the paranormal. Where Karl Marx shakes his fist at the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot speaks to us about the legacies of colonialism. We discuss the contemporary obsession with all things supernatural through a socialist, feminist lens and ask what our strange experiences and beliefs tell us about the society we live in.
The Worker's Cauldron
The Night Doctors
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