Samuel Adolphus Cartwright (November 3, 1793 – May 2, 1863) was an American physician who practiced in Mississippi and Louisiana in the antebellum United States.

[3] During the American Civil War, he was a physician in the Confederate States Army and served in camps near Vicksburg and Port Hudson.

[3] The Medical Association of Louisiana charged Cartwright with investigating "the diseases and physical peculiarities of the negro race".

"[5] In describing his theory and cure for drapetomania, Cartwright relied on passages of Christian scripture dealing with slavery.

[8] Dysaesthesia aethiopica, "called by overseers 'rascality'," was characterized by partial insensitivity of the skin and "so great a hebetude of the intellectual faculties, as to be like a person half asleep."