Samuel A. Cartwright’s article transformed what should be a human rights problem into a medical problem. He defined two diseases that he argued affected only enslaved people. The first was drapetomania, which he said caused slaves to run away. The second was dysaesthesia aethiopica, which was marked by slaves destroying things and what he contended were physical symptoms. By arguing that these diseases were biological rather than economic or social, he argued for the racial inferiority of enslaved and free African Americans alike.