James Still, ‘The Black Doctor of the Pines,’ he was a man who followed his dream of becoming a doctor and offered hope to other African-Americans. Photo Credit: blackpast.org

By Russell Roberts.   James Still, known as “The Black Doctor of the Pines,” was a physician with an enormous knowledge of the curative power of plants. However, in an age where African-Americans were routinely disregarded and ill-treated, Still might well have been called something else: Hope.

His life didn’t start out like that, however. Still was born on April 9, 1812 in the heavily wooded Burlington County, New Jersey. His parents were former slaves who bought their freedom, and he spent his early life in extreme poverty. In his autobiography, Still explained how he pulled a piece of meat away from the cat to have something to eat.

At age three, a doctor came by to vaccinate the family’s children, and the visit had a powerful effect on Still, infusing him with a deep desire to become a doctor. Thereafter, Still continuously dreamed of the day when he could become a physician “healing the sick and doing great miracles.”

However, for an African-American in the first half of the 19^th century, those dreams seemed far away because no black doctors existed that could teach him the skills and no medical school where he could learn the trade. He grew increasingly pessimistic. “I had no books, no money or friends, no one with whom to keep company…[and]commune of my future hopes.”

Finally, in 1843 his fortune turned when he began distilling sassafras roots and other plants and herbs, and selling the mixture to druggists. He bought some books on medical botany, and began experimenting with making curative medicines. One day, a person whose daughter had scrofula (a form of tuberculosis) so bad that conventional doctors had given up on her, begged Still to try his medicines. He did and within ten weeks he had nearly cured her.

Still’s reputation as a healer exploded. People came to him at all hours of the day and night, and he to them. He traveled around in a small wagon, his homemade medicines in a cigar box, visiting patients, charging $1 for medicine and advice. Although white physicians showed contempt for him, Still didn’t care and neither did his patients. “My calls were many,” he said. “The cases under my care I cured.”

Still’s cures flew in the face of existing medical science, and in one instance, he advised a girl not to have a tumor cut out because she would die if she did. However, the white doctor pressured her father not to listen to Still, and when the doctor cut the tumor out, the girl died.

As he aged and could not travel, Still continued to see a flood of patients from all over the region at his little office in Medford, New Jersey. When he died in 1882, the man once so poor he

fought a cat for food, left an estate of almost $20,000. More importantly, he imparted a philosophy – “Aspire to greatness.” A statement that gave African-Americans everywhere, the hope that they too, might one day achieve the same respect and admiration as “The Black Doctor of the Pines.”

Sources

1. “Discover the Hidden New Jersey” by Russell Roberts.

2. “Early Recollections and Life of Dr. James Still” by James Still.

Written by Russell Roberts