In 1864, the scientist Benjamin Apthorp Gould set out to quantify the American body. Tasked with surveying thousands of Civil War soldiers and students, Gould utilized the recently developed spirometer to measure lung capacity. What emerged from his data was less a medical census than a codified narrative of racial difference. Gould claimed a “striking” disparity between Black and white lung function—a finding that conveniently mirrored the pseudo-scientific justifications used to defend enslavement.
This was not merely a historical footnote; it became part of the medical infrastructure. Gould’s assumptions were baked into the equations that translated raw spirometer readings into clinical diagnoses. This “race correction” effectively lowered the threshold of what was considered "normal" for Black patients. Consequently, a reading that would signal respiratory impairment in a white patient was categorized as healthy in a Black patient, institutionalizing a double standard under the guise of objective data.
The legacy of Gould’s survey proved remarkably resilient, surviving long after the social structures of the 19th century had been dismantled. It was only in 2022 that the American Thoracic Society and the European Respiratory Society finally moved to recommend the removal of race-based corrections from lung function equations. The delay highlights a fundamental tension in science: the ease with which social bias, once translated into the language of measurement, can masquerade as immutable fact for generations.
With reporting from Blog of the APA.
Source · Blog of the APA
