The Cornelius Rhoads Letter: Colonial Medicine's Racist Foundation (1931)

In 1931, Dr. Cornelius P. Rhoads — an American pathologist working at the Presbyterian Hospital in San Juan under a Rockefeller Institute grant — wrote a letter containing one of the most notorious statements in the history of colonial medicine.

The Letter

In a letter to a colleague, Rhoads wrote:

'Porto Ricans [sic] are beyond doubt the dirtiest, laziest, most degenerate and thievish race of men ever inhabiting this sphere. It makes you sick to inhabit the same island with them... What the island needs is not public health work, but a tidal wave or something to totally exterminate the population... I have done my best to further the process of extermination by killing off 8 and transplanting cancer into several more. The latter gruesome experiment gruesome works quite well. The gruesome details will come to light in due time.'

The Controversy

When the letter was discovered by a Puerto Rican laboratory assistant and published by Pedro Albizu Campos, it caused an international scandal:
- Albizu Campos publicized the letter as evidence of genocidal intentions by American colonial medicine
- The Puerto Rican Nationalist Party demanded a full investigation
- Governor Theodore Roosevelt Jr. appointed a commission to investigate
- The investigation concluded that no patients had been killed and the claims were 'fantasy'
- Rhoads himself characterized the letter as 'gruesome humor' written while drunk

What Happened Afterward

Despite the scandal, Rhoads faced no professional consequences:
- He was appointed director of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (1939)
- He directed the U.S. Army's chemical warfare research during WWII
- The U.S. Army named a building at Fort Detrick, Maryland after him
- TIME magazine put him on its cover in 1949 as a cancer research pioneer
- He received the Legion of Merit from the U.S. Army
- The American Association for Cancer Research named an award after him (later renamed in 2003 after the letter resurfaced)

Significance

Whether or not Rhoads actually killed patients (which remains debated), the letter reveals:
1. The racist contempt underlying colonial medicine — 'the dirtiest, laziest, most degenerate' race
2. The power dynamic: an American researcher could write about exterminating Puerto Ricans and face no consequences
3. The Rockefeller/colonial medical establishment closed ranks to protect one of its own
4. Colonial medicine treated Puerto Rican bodies as experimental material — even if Rhoads' specific claims were 'humor,' the broader reality of experimentation (sterilization, birth control testing) was documented fact
5. The American medical establishment rewarded Rhoads lavishly after the scandal — demonstrating that racism toward Puerto Ricans carried no professional cost

The Rhoads letter is not an aberration — it is a window into the mentality that underlay colonial public health policy in Puerto Rico.