McCarthy exposes how Rockefeller’s "standardization" was actually a strategic purge designed to monopolize medicine by dismantling Black institutional autonomy. It is a sharp indictment of how corporate philanthropy weaponized education to cement systemic inequality.
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Rockefeller HARMED Black DoctorsAdded:
Welcome to Savvys podcast. I'm your host Sabrina Salvati. My special guest today is Ken McCarthy. He is the author of JFK and RFK's Secret Battle Against Zionist Extremism. You have seen him here before. Welcome back, Ken.
>> Thanks for having me back.
>> So, today um we're going to have a little bit of a different discussion. Um I've been wanting to talk about this for quite some time. you reached out uh because you wanted to talk about the history of black Americans contribution to medicine in the United States and how they were undermined. So the the floor is yours. I think this is something really important that people need to hear about. Go ahead.
>> Very good. And I was inspired because I saw your documentary on Boston which everybody should watch. What's the name of it? I'm sorry I don't remember the name.
>> It's called Remove Black Eraser in Boston.
>> Okay guys, if you haven't seen it, watch it. And and you know, it's a huge it's a huge story. And one of the missing stories because people are somewhat familiar with, you know, what they called negro removal where they just went through and wiped out all these great black neighborhoods. Um, but they're not aware of what of the medical angle. Now, u maybe I'm going to throw up a a thing here. Uh, book number uh uh slide number A. It's it's down the the list there. Slide A. I just want to give this woman uh a call out because her work is so good. So, there's U. There you go. And my eyes are really bad today for reasons, but but but this book is very important and she's a great scholar and she's talking about the medical experimentation angle. All right. Um so I think everybody should read that uh because it's very informative. Now I happen to spend time in the Filillmore neighborhood also called the Western Edition neighborhood of San Francisco and I also have spent a lot of time in New Orleans. Um, so I was very aware of of this whole phenomenon, you know, of neighborhoods getting just bulldozed and wiped out, you know, because you don't know when you arrive later, you didn't know they were there. You just think the highway was always there, you know, and you didn't know, my god, there were over a hundred businesses here, all blackowned, you know. So, there's a medical angle to this, too. So, um, let's jump into this and show picture number one, please.
>> All right. Lincoln University. Exactly.
Now, this is quite an amazing picture.
It's for people that can't read this uh because maybe too small. This is a class uh um it's pro it's not a fraternity.
It's probably more like a literary or philosophical society. And this is Lincoln University 1900.
And um it's very it's very interesting just to look at all the different kinds of people that were in this school. Uh it was open to everybody, you know, and and this thing started in 1854.
It was northeast of uh excuse me, southwest of Philadelphia, kind of close to the Mason Dixon line. It was founded by a couple, the the the wife was an abolitionist. It was a very um Quaker, and it was a very strong um uh abolitionist area. And uh they said, "Hey, we need we got to create a school." So, so because black Americans were not welcome in these fancy colleges and in and in those days going to college was very rare. It's not like today. I mean it was like 1% 2% of the population. So they opened up this school and this school provided over at one time over 20% of all black medical doctors, black American medical doctors in this country came through Lincoln.
This was their undergrad. So it was a very important school. um uh some grads from Lincoln. Uh and your readers probably may know many of these things, but Thrid Marshall went there, Langston Hughes went there, uh Paul Robson went there, Julian Ba went there, uh Gil Scott Herren went there. All right, so let's look at one of the great graduates of this school. Uh image number two.
Okay, >> share it here.
>> There it is. Okay. Uh Nathan Francis Mosul. Mosul.
>> There you go. There you go. Um so basically he was one of the graduates of of Lincoln. Uh and he was one of the first black physicians elected to the Philadelphia County Medical Society. Uh he founded a hospital. This is now remember now he was born in 1856. So this goes way back.
>> Wow. So, so, so we have to look at what happened and and it it what what does what you'll see we're going to get there, but I want you to see what was before we get to what happened or what was done. Okay. Um, yeah. So, he he founded it specifically, of course, to help people, but also to give uh fledgling black physicians and black nurses a a chance to learn, to get educated, to get experience. So, that's that's number one person that we need to pay attention to. And by the way, I'm just pulling a few names. We could spend all day talking about all the black Americans that were involved in medicine in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
That's kind of a clue as to what happened. So, the next one, picture number two.
>> Number three, >> I'm sorry, number two. Number two.
>> Uh, that's uh Nathan.
>> Yes. And this is Well, uh, this should be Daniel. Um, >> okay.
>> Yeah. Yeah, that's the different one.
Sorry, I think I have them numbered uh differently, but that's okay. Uh Daniel Hail.
>> Daniel Hail.
Okay, so this fellow um uh was from Pennsylvania. Uh he he also founded a hospital. Uh he was a uh educator of course, but he was also a surgeon. And it, you know, you know, the the the world of medicine, the history of medicine so vast, it's you can't really nail down who was first. But all evidence suggests is this is the first guy who ever opened up somebody's chest and saved their lives. So the open, you know, kind of like open heart surgery and he did that in 1893.
Uh it's funny when sometimes in the old pictures he's very light. In current pictures he's darker. You know, they're always changing the but he's an African-American. He's a black American.
And it was hard for him to to get in.
But he he he persisted and uh he turned out to be one of the most important cardiac surgeons that ever lived. So that's Yeah. Did you ever hear Did you know this? Because I don't know what people know and what people don't know.
Did you ever >> No, I I didn't hear about him.
>> Okay. Um and then for for our jazz fans, uh because it's 2026 and it's Miles Davis's 100th birthday, his father was what was his father's profession? his father was a dentist and he was I don't know exactly what year he was born 1898.
So there were dental schools where black Americans could easily not easily everyone's got to work to get into school but if they had what it took they could get in. Nobody was borrowing them.
This was a Chicago school I believe or uh where he was uh yeah it was in Chicago. All right. So, let's go now to um the fact that there were a lot of medical schools in the late 1800s and the early 19th century that were not only open to black Americans, but that were predominantly for black Americans.
And if you think about this, it's like, you know, things were super segregated then. And you know, every community better have its own doctors. whatever, you know, Vietnamese, Chinese, you better have people that know you who are your doctors. So, it was very good to have medical schools uh that black Americans could join and and be part of and get degrees from and practice. So, there was one in Raleigh. Uh, of course, Howard, which still exists, was in DC.
There was one in Raleigh, there was one in New Orleans, there was one in Louisville, there was one in Knoxville, there was one in Memphis, Tennessee. All in the 1800s, all this was going down.
So now let's look at the villain in the story number four.
>> Ah yes, William.
>> And and believe he was a villain to everybody, you know, he was just an equal opportunity bastard. And um for some strange reason um the Rockefellers um decided to to make this man the the dictator of American medicine. All right. And the way that worked was in the 1800s there were many different kinds of medical schools, many different schools of thought, right? So there's there was the famous eclectic school and there were many of them. uh and that was based on literally the bringing together of of herbal medicine knowledge and serious knowledge, okay, from uh Native Americans, from black Americans, uh from from Europeans, largely Irish and and countryside English people, right? And they developed a whole, you know, network of schools. It was very effective. You have to remember medicine in the 1800s, here's what they would do if you were sick. And and it was almost better not to have not to have access back then to to the mainstream because the first thing they do is bleed you. They would, you know, they they thought they had to cool you down. So they would get all they would take your blood out. Um George Washington died I think at 66 because they bled a quart of blood out of him when he had some kind of restriction in his throat. So these guy these the mainstream medicine wasn't really good in the 19th century. So the the the people that were doing things like intelligent herbal treatments um uh hygienic treatments, rest treatments, which you know very important for healing, they were very important uh very important folks. So the Rockefellers uh they looked at this and and they said there's too many different kinds of schools. We don't believe in competition. And he even said once that uh competition is a sin. Uh he was a big believer in monopolies. So he decided he was going to take his billions of dollars and completely reform all of medicine. And so what they did was they went around to all the different medical schools and they picked the ones that were going to survive and were not going to survive. And the way they made the schools helped the schools survive is they would of course give them a lot of money um and they would teach them how to raise money, you know, how to like create a whole instit because schools, you know, all schools require a lot of fundraising. Um and uh they made a list of schools they were going to help and they were not going to help. Uh anything that wasn't AMA, American Medical Association, um approved uh was not going to get supported. And that included all the herbal medical schools, uh the osteopathic schools, um whole bunch of different varieties of medicine. They just like they just crossed them right off the list. and they didn't, you know, they weren't very enthusiastic about supporting the uh the black medical schools either. They though they did end up supporting two of them.
So, uh what happened around the the uh very early part of the 20th century is that just the the variety of medicine we had in the in this country more doctors per capita than Europe. There were more doctors around because there was a lot of competition, right? a lot of, you know, that you could you could get in, you could get educated. In those days, it was two days of two years of book learning and then an apprenticeship and then after you proved yourself to the your apprentice over how many years, then you would apply to the local med medical board and then they would yay or nay you. But it was a very rigorous serious system. It just wasn't the system we have today, which is which is where the states run everything. And that's a whole another story that we could get into. But what I want to focus on was the elimination of all competition. And the um AMA in their very first meeting to in Philadelphia uh in 1844, they wrote this down. This wasn't a backroom thing. They said there's too much competition. We got to eliminate the competition. Um the other thing they put in their bylaws was if you are an AMA member, you may not talk to any other physician. if they're an herbalist, if they're whatever, if they're not part of our gang, you can't talk to them, you can't share information with them, you can't share client notes, you can't refer patients, you can't take patients. So, already back in 1844 when they were bleeding everybody. Oh, yeah. So, they bleed you, right? Then the next thing they do is give you uh kind of arsenic laced. This sounds This sounds insane, but everybody please look it up. It's the truth. Then they would give you arsenic laced medicine because they didn't know how bad arsenic was then. believe I don't know how they didn't know and that would cause you to just you know everything would go out all the different ends and that was going to purify you and then they'd give you alcohol andor opium to um you know relax you this was medicine in the middle of the 1800s >> so simultaneous and I mentioned this eclectic medical system they were bringing all the the wisdom u because there's a lot of wisdom in in in in uh because think about it this way human beings have lived for how many tens of thousands of years without X-rays without I mean it's nice to have these things and all the modern stuff we have but then there's a certain thing of maintaining your health and helping restore people that are having difficulty with their health that's an ancient art that goes back thousands of years and we haven't really improved on that part of it like we've improved on the technology side we have not improved on the human side in fact the human side's taken a serious nose dive um so uh so so the so the knowledge that was brought over from Africa that the Native Americans had that the rural people of of Great Britain and Ireland had was significant. It wasn't like some trivial thing. So, let's show me um slide number B, please.
>> All right. The plants.
>> Yeah. So, this is really important. Um and unfortunately from a scholarly point of view it's been very difficult to document what specific contributions uh uh you know new af Africans that had been brought over kidnapped um contributed but we know they contributed a lot because we know there was a lot of communication back in the old old times between the Native Americans. I mean, they the Native Americans would teach the the um the people that were enslaved. They'd teach them medicine. The enslaved people would teach what they knew because contrary to popular belief, uh the people that came over knew a whole lot of stuff. They weren't just, you know, random people.
They were, some of them were quite knowledgeable. This book's interesting.
And we're going to take a slight detour.
Everybody knows rice and likes to eat rice. I like rice. Most people like rice. I don't know how many people realize that the entire foundation of the uh US rice um industry was was created by enslaved people. Now they you know that right?
>> I was I was going to add like this is also why if you ever go to Charleston, South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina is known for their one of the things is their rice. They have all different types of rice, but it's it's a really big, you know, food there in Charleston because there were slaves brought to different ports in the United States. But when they came into Charleston, one of their big, you know, products was rice and and that's what slaves like grew there. Um Rhode Island, I believe it was rum, uh North Carolina tobacco. So there were different things uh throughout but it's true like when Europeans came to the US one of the thing they didn't know how to make how to grow rice and so when they when they during the transatlantic slave trade that was one of the products that was grown was rice >> and and it may be a surprise to people but West Africans have been growing rice forever and they're really good at I I have a friend from uh the Gambia and uh he lives around here. I'm in upstate and when he and his wife were looking at properties, they found this nice piece, but it was kind of soggy and she said, "We can't do anything with this." And he said, "We can grow rice."
And and and I'm like, she was like, "We can't grow rice. It gets cold here."
She, "Oh, no. We can grow, we'll get one season in." This guy grows the best rice in the world. And I'm not exaggerating, right? And he told me an interesting thing about he said his father back in Gambia, he won't even buy storeboat rice. That would be like us, you know, serving Thanksgiving dinner with Cheetos on the on the main dish. It would be like insane. You couldn't even conceive of eating storebought rice cuz it's so inferior to what's grown. But the point I want to make is it's hard to grow rice. Um, and and what's interesting is that uh there are more different climates and and terrains in which rice is grown in West Africa than even the Chinese have figured out. Like the the Africans figured out so many different ways. So that whole industry was impossible had it not been for the people from West Africa that were taken and brought over because they're the ones that did all the engineering, all the planning, everything. They weren't just there with hoes growing things.
They were figuring it. They were making it work. So that I just I tell that story to indicate the the level of sophistication of knowledge that came over because you have to remember before our mechanical era agriculture and handmade everything was it. So if you could if you were good at agriculture you were really an important uh important person. Now how sophisticated was the knowledge of that that black Americans had way back and even in in this country? You could earn your freedom uh by sharing a remedy that really worked.
All right, that's that you can look that up. This is a historical thing that went on in Virginia. If you could because they knew they knew these guys know a lot and we don't know it all and I wish we knew more of their stuff because they they you know life was rough and anything that worked worked. It wasn't this hierarchical thing like well you didn't go to Harvard Medical School how good are you? It was like, hey, my child was dying and now she's alive, you know, and so it it was even though we don't have the particulars of exactly what was shared and put into the pot, we know that that very important contributors.
So, back to Welsh, um he was uh let's let's show that picture of him. Um >> William Welsh. Yeah, >> I'm sorry. It's number four. Yeah. So the Rockefellers said, "Listen, we don't like all these different form schools of medicine, you know, ways of medical thought. We don't like that." And um we're going to we're just going to create a system where they don't exist anymore. And they put this guy in charge. And he was the original dean at John's Hopkins Medical School. Uh he was also one of the guys that that wrote the engineering that destroyed all the competing schools. It was a thing called the Flexner report. Fle ler.
and they went out and targeted anything that was not in the zone. And they gave this guy uh John's Hopkins and how he how he viewed medicine became the only medicine that was allowed.
Okay? Everything else had to go. Now, this guy had an MD. He only went two years to school, too. It wasn't like he has some great education. Uh and then he spent, I think it was seven years in Prussia in in in uh in Germany studying German medicine. Now, German medicine was kind of whacked out. Uh, it was very focused on experimental pathology, like making animals sick and then seeing how they died and then taking notes. I mean, it was kind of bizarre. And he never practiced medicine. He never had a patient in his life. But they put this guy in charge not only of John's Hopkins, but of redoing Harvard, redoing Yale. All all those schools had to conform to the John's Hopkins model. And would you be surprised, not surprised, that he was a racist to the bone?
>> Okay, so no black American was going to get into John Hopkins under this guy, period. And that attitude permeated through the new system. So that and and it wasn't until the 1950s that black Americans were getting into medical schools. So the true history of the medicine is that there were many fine black physicians in the United States in the 19th century and the early 20th century. They were there. They were out there. There were schools. They were doing it right. But then suddenly and and things became very regimented.
If you didn't go to one of the approved schools, you couldn't get a license. Do you follow how this worked? So if you >> and then if you don't have the license, then you can't practice medicine legally.
>> Yeah. Exactly.
>> Yeah. So you're you're you're you're absolutely blocked out. So now here's here's another important thing to think about. And I looked up these numbers. I have them somewhere. I couldn't find them this morning. But something like 20% of all people that go to medical school have somebody in their family that went to medical school. Father, grandfather, makes sense, you know.
Well, what happens when you cut the line and now suddenly black Americans can't go to medical school? there's no there's no chance to build a tradition of hey my my father went my grandfather went you know we're we're a medical family they just cut that thing in around 1910 and it didn't so for 40 years what is that that's like two generations or something that that that they they cut that line now the other thing that's terrible is you know people go to medical school they go back to their communities right the place where they're from and they practice medicine in their hometown so when they destroyed all medical schools and then blocked black Americans from entering uh you know the approved AMA Rockefeller approved Welsh approved medical schools. They cut off the supply of black physicians to the black neighborhoods.
I mean it's it's unbelievable but they did it.
>> I've been trying to tell people that like this is it's been going on for years. Like a lot of times people just mention slavery. I mean it's not just about slavery. all these other, you know, practices that happen as well. I did not know until today. I know Rockefeller was um, you know, a tycoon and a monopolizer. I did not know that he was involved in the medical field.
>> He the Rockefeller mentality completely took over the practice of medicine in America in the early 20th century and they've never let go. And so all the because what's a monopoly? Like he his thing was monopoly. A monopoly means you can charge anything. First of all, you you you short you you constrain the supply, right? And when you control the supply and once you do that, you can charge anything you want. And the quality can be crap because nobody has any other choice. Does that sound a little bit like our medical system today? It's not an accident. It was designed to be that way, you know, and it's very profitable for the people that are are profiting from it, which by the way don't necessarily include doctors.
They're they're they're making less and less money every year. This is a system that is just terrible for everyone. Um, but you know, if people wonder, well, why aren't there more black physicians?
Well, if you exclude a whole group of people for 40 years from getting an education in that field despite ample demonstration of capacity going that's why I wanted to show those early pictures.
This is not like well they they weren't educated so they didn't really quite know, you know. No, no, no. they were running they were in they were creating hospitals uh pioneer of cardiac surgery uh major contributors to the eclectic school of medicine uh you know so anyway I just wanted I don't I've never seen this on the internet anywhere before and uh my main thing is believe it or not I talk about all kinds of stuff but it is medical history the the uh the history of of of how how we got where we are today um I've written a number of books about that I saw I wrote a book called what the nurses saw Um I wrote a book called Fouch's First Fraud. Um and so that's that's actually my main area of expertise. These other things are just I I are just sidelines, you know, but um we could have such a much better medical system today. And I I I'm grateful that I had an opportunity to talk about uh the real history of our medicine and how it's impacted uh everybody really to the negative.
>> Yeah. I I I think that um people don't understand that when you take something away from someone and they don't have access for x number of years, when they do receive access to that opportunity, again, you're starting all over. You're you're starting all over from scratch.
And it's like what I talked about before with displacement, like taking people's neighborhoods, like they're starting all over. Um Cynica Village, I think, is a really good example of this. uh which for those who don't know Sica village is was um where you see Central Park that was once C sica village and there was an entire community of black Americans that moved there and they this was you know after like slavery and stuff and they moved there and they were building homes and building their own schools and and everything and then you know the the government comes in and they say we're going to take this land and create green space and this is why I always caution people when you hear these terms that we need green space. That means that something is going to be torn down.
People are going to be displaced for that green space to exist. People have to understand that. Now, they don't frame it in that way, but that's really what's going to happen. And so, they came in, they kicked them off the land, took the land. That's how you have Central Park. And see, and I think there's a plaque somewhere in Central Park that acknowledges like, you know, here lies Cynica Village or something like that. A lot of people in America have no idea that this was once even a thing. So that entire community was displaced and they had to move and try to restart and rebuild again. This has been happening for years and it's hard to rebuild from scratch and and and you know I mentioned that 20% or so of of all people in medical school have a family member. Well, that's a big aid.
You know, somebody can just sort of explain to you here's how it goes.
Here's the ropes. you know, and if you don't have that, that's a major resource that's that's missing. Um, you know, I I grew up in New York City and uh went to Central Park a lot. I didn't know until I was in my 60s about Senica Village.
>> I probably walked over it and didn't even know I was walking over it. You know, >> it's not taught. Um, I mean, like I took a lot of history classes like uh not just in high school, but also middle school and then in college as well. It was never taught to me. This was something that I had to find out on my own. like as an adult just like you, but like it it was never taught. Um there's a lot of history that's missing in this country. When we look at the medical profession in particular, you mentioned John Hopkins University. So like my family is from Baltimore, Maryland.
>> Oh, all about it.
>> Yeah. I got to tell you guys, like John Hopkins University still does displacement till this day. A lot of people don't know, but like that area over there where if you go to John Hopkins at one point in time, that was also a black neighborhood. A as John Hopkins expanded, they continued to take more and more land. And again, when you're taking more land, that means that somebody else is losing their home. So, there's a lot of that. I I I talk in the documentary about the displacement under uh Nor Eastern University here in Boston where they've taken homes and things from people as well. Um uh black neighborhood Roxberry uh that's how Northeastern University was able to expand and they acknowledge this. They don't deny it. Um but it also happened with John Hopkins too.
>> Yeah. and and the original John's Hopkins, the guy who left the money to the school, he originally wanted to build a hospital in Baltimore that was open to all including black Baltimoreans. And as soon as he was in the grave, couple years later, the board of trustees did a little switcheroo and that whole idea got got, you know, scuttled.
>> So, yeah. And when when I don't have the quote, but when he died, the black when Welsh died, the the the black paper in town had uh some things to say about him. Uh oh. No, you got you we say see here. I got it. We have to give Dr. Welsh the credit for building the medical school, but he likewise must assume responsibility for the race, prejudice, and lack of toleration there.
>> That's right.
>> So, yeah.
>> That's right. I mean, I think, you know, a lot of this points back to the money because once again, like you mentioned, Rockefeller, once again, it was someone at the top who was calling the shots and making these decisions.
>> Yeah. It didn't It was It was absolutely not natural, not organic, didn't just sort of happen by itself. Wasn't the natural flow of evolution. No. Some guy who wasn't a doctor, Rockefeller wasn't a doctor. uh the guy he put in charge of of doing all this uh and managing it, he wasn't a doctor. And then the guy they put in charge of John's Hopkins, he had an MD, but he never practiced medicine his life. He spent his whole time as a young man cutting up uh animals that were live. I mean, this is the guy that's at the root. And I got Do you have a second for one more John's Hopkins story?
>> Go ahead.
>> Okay. So, most pe many people have heard about the residency med medical residency. So when you get an MD, that doesn't mean you know anything. It just means you've got an MD and now you have to get a residency and spend a couple years working under other doctors and then finally you get ready to practice medicine. That's how it works. So the residency program in the United States used to be brutal brutal. It's still pretty brutal. And we're talking about like 100hour work weeks. And we're not I'm not exaggerating like I'm not you know some of these people say that I work 100. No, you don't really. But but they really had to work 100 hour work weeks. The guy that Welsh put in charge of the residence to invent this residency program was a cocaine addict.
And this guy blew himself out so badly he had to disappear for two years. And when he came back he was a morphine addict which he stayed on morphine for the rest he never got off morphine. So the man that created the foundation for this insane system because a lot of people have been injured, hurt and killed by exhausted young doctors who were, you know, facing their 95th hour, you know, on their feet and totally unnecessary, totally manic, totally created out of the blue by John's Hopkins, by a guy that Welsh put in and stayed. He when the guy came back, he put him right back in.
Our medical system, I'll tell you, our medical system does some good things.
Um, but we have to keep an eye on it and and it needs a bit, it needs reform.
>> I hear you. All right, Kim McCarthy, thank you so much. Where can people follow your work?
>> I have a website called Brass Checkbooks, brass checkbooks.com.
And there's a link to my occasional podcast, very occasional, uh, a, and my books and, uh, my email list if somebody wants to be on my email list.
>> Awesome, Ken. Thank you so much.
>> Thanks for having me on. Thanks for letting me tell this story. You're the only person that ever wanted to hear this. Thank you.
>> Hey guys, this was a savvy clip. If you like what you saw, hit that like button and subscribe.
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