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J. Marion Sims

October 16, 2023

James Marion Sims (January 25, 1813 – November 13, 1883) was an American physician in the field of surgery. His most famous work was the development of a surgical technique for the repair of vesicovaginal fistula, a severe complication of obstructed childbirth.[3] He is also remembered for inventing Sims speculum, Sims sigmoid catheter, and the Sims position. Against significant opposition, he established, in New York, the first hospital specifically for women. He was forced out of the hospital he founded because he insisted on treating cancer patients; he played a small role in the creation of the nation's first cancer hospital, which opened after his death.[4]

J. Marion Sims
J. Marion Sims, engraving after photograph, ca. 1880
Born
James Marion Sims

January 25, 1813 (1813-01-25)[1]
Lancaster County, South Carolina, U.S.
DiedNovember 13, 1883 (1883-11-14) (aged 70)[2]
New York City, U.S.
Resting placeGreen-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
EducationSouth Carolina College
Medical College of Charleston
Alma materJefferson Medical College
OccupationSurgeon
Known forvesicovaginal surgery
SpouseTheresa Jones
Children9
Relatives
Signature

He was one of the most famous and venerated physicians in the country. In 1876, he was elected President of the American Medical Association. He was one of the first American physicians to become famous in Europe.[5] He openly boasted that he was the second-wealthiest doctor in the country.[6]

However, as medical ethicist Barron H. Lerner states, "one would be hard pressed to find a more controversial figure in the history of medicine."[7] A statue in his honor, the first statue in the United States in honor of a physician,[8] was erected in 1894 in Bryant Park in New York City, but removed in 2018.

There are ethical questions raised by how he developed his surgical techniques.[9] He operated without anesthesia on enslaved black women (who, like prisoners, could not meaningfully consent because they could not refuse).[9][7] In the twentieth century, this was condemned as an improper use of human experimental subjects and Sims was described as "a prime example of progress in the medical profession made at the expense of a vulnerable population".[9] He has been called a "butcher" and compared to Nazi physician Josef Mengele.[10] Sims' practices were defended as consistent with the US in the era in which he lived by physician and anthropologist L. Lewis Wall,[11] and other medical historians. According to Sims, the enslaved black women were "willing" and had no better option.[7]

Sims was a prolific writer and his published reports on his medical experiments, together with his own 471-page autobiography[12] (summarized in an address just after his death[13]), are the main sources of knowledge about him and his career. His positive self-presentation has, in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, been subject to revision.

Childhood, education, and early career Edit

James Marion Sims, who preferred to be called "Marion", was born in Lancaster County, South Carolina,[14] the son of John and Mahala (Mackey) Sims. His father, Colonel John Sims, "now [1856] of Texas," participated in the War of 1812, being stationed at Charleston. His paternal grandfather was one of Marion's men; his great-grandfather was with Washington at Braddock's defeat. His maternal grandfather, Charles Mackey, was taken prisoner by Banastre Tarleton, and would have been hanged, but for the intervention of his wife.[15]

For the first twelve years of his life, Sims and his family lived in Lancaster Village, north of Hanging Rock Creek, where his father owned a store. Sims later wrote of his early school days there.[13]: 4–5 

After his father was elected sheriff of Lancaster County, he sent Sims in 1825 to the newly established Franklin Academy, in Lancaster. In 1832, after two years of study at the predecessor of the University of South Carolina, South Carolina College, where he was a member of the Euphradian Society, Sims worked with Dr. Churchill Jones in Lancaster, South Carolina. He took a three-month course at the Medical College of Charleston (predecessor of the Medical University of South Carolina), but found it too rigorous.[16]

He moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1834 and enrolled at the Jefferson Medical College, from which he graduated in 1835 as "a lackluster student who showed little ambition after receiving his medical degree".[7] As he put it:

I felt no particular interest in my profession at the beginning of it apart from making a living.... I was really ready at any time and at any moment to take up anything that offered, or that held out any inducement of fortune, because I knew that I could never make a fortune out of the practice of medicine.[13]: 8 

He returned to Lancaster to practice. As of that date "he had had no clinical experience, logged no actual hospital time, and had no experience diagnosing illnesses."[16] After his first two patients (infants) died, Sims was despondent. He left and set up a practice in Mount Meigs, near Montgomery, Alabama.[13]: 7  He described the settlement in a letter to his future wife Theresa Jones as "nothing but a pile of gin-houses, stables, blacksmith-shops, grog-shops, taverns and stores, thrown together in one promiscuous huddle".[12]: 374  He was in Mount Meigs from 1835 to 1837.[17]: 6  Sims visited Lancaster in 1836 to marry Theresa, whom he had met many years earlier, when a student in Lancaster. She was the daughter of B.C. Jones, and the niece of Churchill Jones, and had studied at the South Carolina Female Collegiate Institute.[12]: 177–178 [18]

In 1837 Sims and his wife moved to Cubahatchee, Alabama, where they remained until 1840.[17]: 6  He was a "plantation physician",[16] who had "a partnership in a large practice among rich plantations."[13]: 7  "Sims became known for operations on clubfeet, cleft palates and crossed eyes."[16] This was his first experience treating enslaved black women, whose owners summoned Sims to treat them. Being a "plantation physician" was not as lucrative as Sims hoped a life as a doctor would be.[19]: 77 

Practice in Montgomery Edit

In 1840 the couple moved to Montgomery, Alabama,[13]: 7–8  where they lived until 1853.[17]: 10  Sims later described this period as the "most memorable time" of his career.[20] Within a few years he "had the largest surgical practice in the State", and the largest practice of any doctor in Montgomery up to that time.[17]: 7  "He was immensely popular, and greatly beloved."[17]: 8  When he returned to the city for a visit in 1877, he was treated as a hero.[21]

 
Sims' Surgical Infirmary for Negroes

In Montgomery, Sims continued essentially his practice as a plantation physician: treating the enslaved, who then made up two thirds of the city's population.[22]: 34  He built a hospital or "Surgical Infirmary for Negroes", for those women their owners brought him for treatment.[13]: 9  It began with four beds, but it was so successful he added a second floor, doubling capacity to eight beds. One source says it expanded to twelve beds. It has been called "the first woman's hospital in history".[23] It was also the first hospital specifically for Blacks in the United States.

In 1840, the field of gynecology did not exist; there was no training on the subject, for Sims or anyone else.[13] The only books were on midwifery. Medical students did not study pregnancy, childbirth, or gynecological diseases. Student doctors were often trained on dummies to deliver babies. They did not see their first clinical cases of women until beginning their practices.[24]: 28  "The practice of examining the female organs was considered repugnant by doctors." Sims shared this view, remarking in his autobiography that "if there was anything I hated, it was investigating the organs of the female pelvis".[22]: 34 

Medical experimentation on enslaved women Edit

Repair of vesicovaginal fistulas Edit

 
Site of Sims' office in Montgomery, Alabama.

In 1845 Sims was brought a woman with a condition he had not seen before: vesicovaginal fistula. Although not fatal, in the nineteenth century, vesicovaginal fistulas were "one of the most loathsome and disagreeable maladies to which females are subject,"[25] and a common, socially destructive, and a terrible complication of childbirth that affected many women.[11] There was no effective cure or treatment. In an era without adequate birth control and rudimentary knowledge of the processes of pregnancy and childbirth, women who gave birth frequently experienced complications afterwards.[24] Vesicovaginal fistulas occur when the woman's bladder, cervix, and vagina become trapped between the fetal skull and the woman's pelvis, cutting off blood flow and leading to tissue death. The necrotic tissue later sloughs off, leaving a hole. Following this injury, as urine forms, it leaks from the vagina, leading to a form of incontinence. Because a continuous stream of urine leaks from the vagina, it is difficult to keep the area clean. Such personal hygiene issues often lead to marginalization from society as well as vaginal irritation, scarring, and loss of vaginal function. Sims also worked to repair rectovaginal fistulas, a similar condition in which flatulence and feces escape from the rectum through a tear in the tissue separating it from the vagina, thus leading to fecal incontinence.[11]

When Sims went to see a patient with an injured pelvis from a fall from a horse, he placed her in a knee-chest position and inserted his finger into the vagina. This allowed Sims to see the vagina clearly, and spurred him to investigate fistula treatment.[24][13] In order to facilitate the examination of patients, he soon developed a precursor to the modern speculum, using a pewter spoon and strategically placed mirrors. As a result, he has generally been credited with the instrument's invention.[26]

 
Sims' vaginal speculum.

Sims, however, was not the first to successfully treat a vesicovaginal fistula, not even in the United States; Dr. John Peter Mettauer had successfully surgically repaired one in Virginia in 1838; and Dr. George Hayward in Boston the following year.[27][28] Moreover, Henry van Roonhuyse's clinical treatise entitled Medico-Chirurgical Observations (1676) had outlined essential repair steps for such conditions that are recognizable even today.[29]

Between 1845–49, Sims performed experimental surgery on enslaved black women to treat vaginal problems. He added a second story to his four-bed hospital, doubling its capacity.[13]: 10  He developed techniques that have since formed the basis of modern vaginal surgery; one key component was silver wire, which he had a jeweler prepare.[30] Sims' vaginal speculum, described above, aided in vaginal examination and surgery. The rectal examination position, in which the patient is on the left side with the right knee flexed against the abdomen and the left knee slightly flexed, is also named for him.

Experimental subjects Edit

Occasionally, Sims conducted experimental surgery on white women, but his main subjects were twelve enslaved black women with fistulas, who he treated at his own expense in his backyard hospital.[31][32]: 20, 22  [33] They were brought to him by their owners. Sims searched for patients with this fistula, and succeeded in finding six or seven women.[13]: 9  Sims took responsibility for their care on the condition that the owners provide clothing and pay any taxes; Sims provided food.[26] He purchased one woman specifically in order to experiment surgically when her owner refused to allow Sims to treat her otherwise.[22]: 35 

The use of enslaved people for medical research was not considered controversial in the Antebellum South.[34] A prospectus from the 1830s of the South Carolina Medical College, then the South's leading medical school, pointed out to prospective students that it had an advantage of a peculiar character:

No place in the United States offers as great opportunities for the acquisition of anatomical knowledge, subjects being obtained from among the colored population in sufficient number for every purpose, and proper dissection carried on without offending any individual in the community. Those impediments which exist in so many other places, to the prosecution of this study, are not here thrown in the path of the Student, public feeling being rather favourable than hostile to the advancement of the Science of Anatomy.[35][36]: 190 

The college announced, in advertisements in the Charleston papers, that it had set up a surgery (operating room) for negroes, and offered to treat without charge, while it was in session, any "interesting cases" sent by their owners, "for the benefit and instruction of their pupils". They extended the offer to free "persons of color".[36]: 191  The advertisement ends by pointing out that their sole objective was "to promote the interest of Medical Education."[36]: 193 

Sims named three enslaved black women in his autobiography: Anarcha, Betsy, and Lucy. Each of them suffered from fistula, and all were subjects of his surgical experimentation.[7] Sims conducted experimental surgery on each of them several times, including operating on Anarcha thirty times before the repair of her fistulas was declared a success.[24] Anarcha suffered from both vesicovaginal and rectovaginal fistulas, which Sims struggled to repair.[11] "Notwithstanding repeated failures during four years' time, he kept his six patients and operated until he tired out his doctor assistants, and finally had to rely upon his patients to assist him to operate."[13]: 10  Unlike his previous essays, which included at least a brief description of his patients, the article issued in The American Journal of the Medical Sciences omits any identifying characteristics of Anarcha, Betsy, or Lucy.[37] Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsy are memorialized in the statue Mothers of Gynecology, unveiled in Montgomery, Alabama, on September 24, 2021.[38]

Sims' former collaborator, Nathan Bozeman, later supplied the names of at least four other African-American women treated by Sims during this period:

  • Ann McRee, 16, treated by Sims for fistula in 1849.[39]: 2 [32]: 19–21 
  • Lavinia Boudurant, 13, had a bladder calculus removed by Sims in 1850.[32]: 23 
  • Delia, 23, "Dr. Sims' own servant [slave]", who between 1850 and 1853 underwent ten or more operations for fistula repair.[32]: 24 
  • Julia McDuffie, 20, operated on by Sims for fistula closure in March 1853, and again in June 1853 by Bozeman after Sims' departure for New York.[32]: 25–27, 42–45 

Anesthesia Edit

Although anesthesia had very recently been used experimentally, Sims did not use any anesthetic during his procedures on these three women.[7] Ether anesthesia was first publicly demonstrated in Boston in 1846, a year after Sims began his experimental surgery. Sims himself indicated that he was unaware at the time of the use of diethyl ether.[40][11][26] For his era, however, Sims was well-informed, and subscribed to medical journals. He must have read one of the many reports about research into anesthesia, where religious objections to anesthesia were raised.[41][42][43][44][45] As late as 1853, when Sims's fistula experiments were concluded and reports on them were being published, many physicians still doubted chloroform's safety, and guidelines for its proper administration during surgery had yet to be devised and published.[46]

In addition, a common belief at the time was that black people did not feel as much pain as white people.[47] Given this, Sims did not anesthetize the women he operated on while developing his fistula repair technique. Anesthesia was itself still experimental; early anesthetic agents were much more dangerous than the replacements developed in the twentieth century. Dosing was also imprecise: underdosing did not kill the pain; overdosing could and sometimes did kill the patient. Chloroform could be obtained from a druggist, but nitrous oxide and the highly flammable ether had to be manufactured by the surgeon on the spot. In Sims' day, surgeons were trained to operate quickly on unanesthetized patients. Anesthesia was first used in dentistry, and was just being announced as an exciting novelty in privately published pamphlets, some claiming credit for the anesthetic's first use, at the same time as Sims' fistula repair surgeries.[48][49]

Perhaps ironically, Sims later became an expert on anesthesia, publishing on nitrous oxide in 1868,[50] and in 1874 on chloroform.[51] In 1874 Sims addressed the New York State Medical Society on "The Discovery of Anaesthesia," in which he claimed that Americans had discovered the practice before the British,[52][53] and in 1880 he delivered a paper (published soon afterwards) at the New York Academy of Medicine about a death from anesthesia.[13]: 22 [54]

Sims also committed other blunders due to the primitive knowledge about sanitation and infection in surgical theaters at the time. One patient, named Lucy, nearly died from sepsis after Sims operated on her without anesthetics in the presence of twelve doctors, experimentally using a sponge during the procedure to wipe urine from her bladder.[24] Sims negligently left the sponge in her urethra and bladder.[33] Although Sims eschewed using anesthesia during surgery, he did frequently administer opium to the women afterwards, which was accepted therapeutic practice of the day.[55] However, the use of opium was primarily used to ensure that these women operated on would not run away in response to the excruciating pain of the procedure. [56]

Sims eventually perfected his technique. One of his key developments was the introduction in 1849 of silver wire as a suture, thus avoiding the infections associated with silk sutures, or the potential poisoning from using lead sutures (as Mettauer had done in 1838).[5][13]: 10  Sims published an account of his successful repair of Anarcha's suture using the silver wire in his surgical reports of 1852.[9][57] He proceeded to repair fistulas in several other enslaved black women.[58]

According to Durrenda Ojanuga, after Sims' successful treatment of Anarcha, he was asked by many white women to repair vesicovaginal fistulas, but most of them were apparently unable to endure the pain of the operation.[59] However, the Journal of Medical Ethics reports a case study of one white woman whose fistula was repaired by Sims without the use of anesthesia during a series of three operations in 1849.[11]

Sims later moved to New York to found a Woman's Hospital, where he performed the operation on white women. Here there are some discrepancies regarding whether he used anesthesia there. Ojanuga has claimed he did not, but L. L. Wall, suggests that as of 1857, Sims did not use anesthesia to perform fistula surgery on white women, citing Sims' lecture to the New York Academy of Medicine of November 18 that year, wherein Sims asserted that he never used anesthesia for fistula surgery because the procedure was not painful enough to justify the risks of administering it. Wall notes that, while Sims' refusal to use anesthetic seems shocking to us now, Sims was expressing the contemporary sensibilities of the mid-1800s, particularly among surgeons who began their practice in the pre-anesthetic era.[24][47][11]

Trismus nascentium Edit

During his early medical years, Sims also became interested in trismus nascentium, also known as neonatal tetanus, that occurs in newborns. A nineteenth-century doctor described it as "a disease that has been almost constantly fatal, commonly in the course of a few days; the women are so persuaded of its inevitable fatality that they seldom or ever call for the assistance of our art."[60]

Trismus nascentium is a form of generalised tetanus. Infants who have not acquired passive immunity from the mother having been immunised are at risk for this disease. It usually occurs through infection of the unhealed umbilical stump, particularly when the stump is cut with a non-sterile instrument. In the twenty-first century, neonatal tetanus mostly occurs in developing countries, particularly those with the least-developed healthcare infrastructure. It is rare in developed countries.[61]

Trismus nascentium is now recognized to be the result of unsanitary practices and nutritional deficiencies, but in the nineteenth century its cause was unknown, and many enslaved African children contracted this disease. Medical historians believe that the conditions of the quarters of enslaved people were the cause. Sims alluded to the idea that sanitation and living conditions played a role in its contraction, writing that

[w]henever there are poverty, and filth, and laziness, or where the intellectual capacity is cramped, the moral and social feelings blunted, there it will be oftener found. Wealth, a cultivated intellect, a refined mind, an affectionate heart, are comparatively exempt from the ravages of this unmercifully fatal malady. But expose this class to the same physical causes, and they become equal sufferers with the first.[16]

Sims also thought trismus nascentium developed from skull bone movement during protracted births. To test this, Sims used a shoemaker's awl to pry the skull bones of enslaved infants into alignment. These experiments had a 100% fatality rate. Sims often performed autopsies on the corpses, which he kept for further research on the condition.[16][35] He blamed these fatalities on "the sloth and ignorance of their mothers and the black midwives who attended them," not the extensive experimental surgeries that he conducted upon the babies.[35][62][63]

New York: the Woman's Hospital Edit

 
Woman's Hospital, New York City, 1855
 
Woman's Hospital, New York City, 1870

Sims moved to New York in 1853, reluctantly, because of his health. He decided to focus on diseases of women. He had an office at 267 Madison Avenue.[64] In 1860 a Charleston, South Carolina, newspaper described his success as "splendid," and called him "the happiest man in New York."[65]

In 1855 he founded the Woman's Hospital, which, not counting his own backyard infirmary, was the first hospital for women in the United States. At its inception, Woman's Hospital's primary purpose was to repair vesico-vaginal fistulas using Sims' technique,[66]: 24  in service to the poor. No "pay patients" were admitted.[12]: 299  Located on Madison Avenue and 29th Street in a rented four-story house, a location deliberately chosen near Sims' home, the hospital's thirty beds were quickly filled. In the beginning, Sims operated without assistance from other doctors, performing one fistula repair each day. Many of his patients were poor Irish immigrant women.[67][68]

His project met with "universal opposition" from the New York medical community;[13]: 11  instead, it was due to prominent women that he established it. As Sims related, they were visited by "prominent doctors, who endeavored to convince them that they were making a mistake, that they had been deceived, [and] that no such hospital was needed" to treat their condition.[13]: 12–13  He recalled that "I was called a quack and a humbug, and the hospital was pronounced a fraud. Still it went on with its work."[13]: 13  In 1857, the New York State Legislature granted the hospital a formal charter and $50,000 for a permanent home, while the city of New York granted it the land between Fourth (now Park) and Lexington Avenues and 49th and 50th Streets in Manhattan to build its new premises, the site of today's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Sims would go to Europe in 1861 to study hospital architecture, particularly the new pavilion plan, as part of the planning of the new buildings. The first pavilion was completed in 1866; a second was finished in 1872.[67][69]

In the Woman's Hospital, Sims usually performed his operations on indigent women in an operating theatre so that medical students and other doctors could view it, as was considered fundamental to medical education at the time. Some patients remained in the hospital indefinitely and underwent repeated procedures.[22][why?]

When Sims addressed the American Medical Association in 1858 on the topic "Treatment of the results of obstructed labor", the "charts" which illustrated it "caused the lady auditors to vacate the gallery."[70]

Sims and the Confederacy Edit

Sims' Southern sympathies were no secret—he was no abolitionist—and even in New York, many of his patients were Southern ladies. As the American Civil War drew near, this practice fell away, and he did not feel comfortable remaining in New York.[66]: 27–28 

In 1861 Sims, who considered himself "a loyal Southerner," moved to Europe. There, he toured hospitals at first primarily for the purpose of researching hospital architecture for the new premises of his Woman's Hospital in New York, then still in the planning stages, but his renown soon permitted him to demonstrate his vesicovaginal repair surgery multiple times. First, he arrived in Dublin and performed one in front of Dr. Fleetwood Churchill and other colleagues. He then proceeded to Edinburgh to see Sir James Young Simpson operate on dysmenorrhea, but evidently "did not think it well done." From there, he went to London, and performed a second fistula repair with several colleagues on hand to observe, including Dr. Thomas Spencer Wells (soon to be appointed Queen Victoria's household surgeon). The patient, however, died within six days because, as the autopsy showed, Sims had inadvertently closed the patient's ureter. Undaunted, he went to Paris in September 1861, where he performed fistula repairs at the Beaujon, the Hôpital St. Louis, the Hôtel Dieu, and La Charité. Afterwards, Sims was called to Brussels to operate there, before returning to Paris. These surgeries greatly enhanced Sims's reputation, and he planned on traveling to Vienna to demonstrate the procedure there, when another case from a colleague arrived in the French capital and eventually caused him to cancel his trip to Austria.[13][22]: 46 

Sims returned to the US in January 1862 aboard the Great Eastern, and back in New York he favorably reported on the pavilion plan and convinced the board of the Woman's Hospital to adopt it. He then returned to Europe in July 1862, intending to return to New York for six months out of the year to earn enough to allow his family to stay in Europe. However, Sims discovered that a remunerative practice to support his family working on fistula patients in Paris was possible, and so he decided to remain in Europe until the cessation of hostilities in the USA.[22]: 46 [16][13] He simultaneously ran consulting rooms in Paris, Berlin, and London.[71][69] However, according to J.C. Hallman, Sims was actually in Europe as one of several government agents of the Confederacy, who were seeking money (loans), diplomatic recognition of their new government (which never came to pass), along with supplies and ships. An intercepted letter informed Lincoln's Secretary of State William H. Seward that Sims was "secessionist in sentiment," and that his "purpose in going abroad at this time is believed to be hostile to the government," as Seward reported to U.S. diplomats in Europe.[72] According to the U.S. Minister in Brussels Henry Shelton Sanford, Sims was a "violent secessionist," and his "movements in Europe had 'given color to (the) opinion' that he was a spy."[72]

Possibly the most celebrated episode in Sims' life was his summons, in 1863, to treat Empress Eugénie for a fistula, which was widely reported and helped Sims to solidify his global surgical reputation.[16] But, according to Hallman, no source confirms that Eugénie had any documented medical problem at all. Sims' visits to the palace were semi-diplomatic Confederate visits, and the illness an element of subterfuge to escape the eyes of U.S. Federal diplomats, who had their eyes on Sims. Eugénie became an "ardent disciple" of the Confederacy.[72]

In 1864 Sims moved to London from his previous base in Paris for the education of his children. He published Clinical Notes on Uterine Surgery simultaneously in English, French, and German (London, Paris, and Berlin) in 1865; this work described novel methods of treatment which were not readily adopted by the profession, but which in a few years would revolutionize the practice of gynecology.[69] Sims remained in Europe until after the end of Civil War, in September 1868, opening an office upon his return to New York at 13 East 28th Street in Manhattan.[13]

After the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed in 1868, Sims unsurprisingly commented that it was a "dreadful mistake...to give the negro the franchise."[72] Two years later, offering a toast on board the steamer Atlantic, returning to Europe, he declared that in the aftermath of the war, the South had been degraded "beyond the level of the meanest slave that ever wore a shackle."[72] At the same time, Sims argued that it was puerile for the South to sulk in its loss. He called for an acceptance of the outcome of the war, including the Fifteenth Amendment. "It is folly to talk of the lost cause," he said.[72]

Later career Edit

 
Statue of Sims in New York's Central Park, removed in April 2018.

Having treated royalty, after his return to the United States, Sims raised his fees in his private practice. He thus effectively limited it to wealthy women, although "he always had a long roll of charity patients."[73]: 25  He became known for the Battey surgery, which contributed to his "honorable reputation".[clarification needed] This involved the removal of both ovaries. It became a popular treatment to relieve insanity, epilepsy, hysteria (diseased uterus), and other "disorders of the nerves" (as mental illness was called at the time). At the time, these were believed to be caused by disorders of the female reproductive system.[22]

Sims received honors and medals for his successful operations in many countries. Since the twentieth century, the necessity of many of these surgeries has been questioned.[by whom?] He frequently performed surgery for what were considered gynecological issues: such as clitoridectomies, then believed to control hysteria or improper behavior related to sexuality. These were done at the requests of the women's husbands or fathers, who were permitted under the law to commit the women to surgery involuntarily.[58]

Under the patronage of Napoleon III, in 1870 Sims organized the American-Anglo Ambulance Corps, which treated wounded soldiers from both sides at the Battle of Sedan.[58]

The first cancer hospital Edit

 
Thomas Eakins' The Agnew Clinic (1889) illustrates a typical scene inside a medical amphitheater in an American teaching hospital, in this case at the University of Pennsylvania. Sims operated frequently in such a setting at the Woman's Hospital.

In 1871, Sims returned to New York and resumed working at the Woman's Hospital, where he provided surgical treatment for women with cancer. At the time, cancer was considered to be a disease specific to the lower socioeconomic classes, and feared by some to be contagious or even sexually transmitted. In response to Sims' efforts, the highly influential Ladies' Board of the Woman's Hospital strongly argued against the treatment of cancer patients, which resulted in the hospital prohibiting the admission of cancer patients. At a meeting of the hospital's Board of Governors in 1874, Sims gave a speech rebuking the Board for refusing to treat cases of cancer even in their earliest stages. In addition, he criticized the restriction imposed by the Ladies' Board limiting the number of spectators to fifteen on operating days. Previously, as many as sixty could observe any given operation, but this had been changed because the Ladies' Board considered it an affront to a woman's modesty to have more than fifteen male surgeons observe a woman's sexual organs under treatment. Sims argued that this restriction impaired the distribution of knowledge to the many surgeons who came to New York to study gynecological diseases.[74]

The controversial nature of Sims' speech resulted in the acceptance of his resignation by the Woman's Hospital's Board of Governors a month later. He was accused of being "reckless" and "lethal" by a member of the Board of Governors, who argued Sims should be fired for his insubordination. It predictably also brought him into conflict with some other doctors at the Woman's Hospital, with whom Sims carried on a dialogue by means of published pamphlets.[75][76][77]

After quarreling with the board of the Woman's Hospital over the admission of cancer patients, Sims became instrumental in establishing America's first cancer institute, New York Cancer Hospital.[78]

In reply to the treatment he received from the Woman's Hospital, Sims was unanimously elected president of the American Medical Association, an office he held from 1876 to 1877.[17]: 18 [16]

Death Edit

Sims suffered two angina attacks in 1877, and in 1880, contracted a severe case of typhoid fever. W. Gill Wylie, one of Sims' early twentieth-century biographers, said that although Sims suffered delirium, he was "constantly contriving instruments and conducting operations".[13] After several months and a move to Charleston to aid his convalescence, Sims recovered in June 1881. He traveled to France. After his return to the United States in September 1881, he began to complain of an increase in heart problems.

In 1881, Sims was one of four physicians asked for an opinion about whether medical errors had contributed to the recent death of President Garfield.[79][80]

According to Wylie, Sims consulted with doctors for his unknown cardiac condition both in the United States and in Europe. He was "positive that he had a serious disease of the heart and it caused deep mental depression".[13] He was halfway through writing his autobiography and planning a return visit to Europe when he died of a heart attack on November 13, 1883, in New York City (Manhattan). He had just visited a patient with his son, H. Marion Sims. He is buried at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.

Criticism of Sims Edit

Sims' experimental surgeries without anesthesia on enslaved women, who could not consent, have been described since the late twentieth century as an example of systemic racism in the medical profession. This is more generally understood as part of the historical oppression of people of color and vulnerable populations in the United States.[9] Patients of Sims' fistula and trismus nascentium operations were also not given available anesthetics, and it is generally accepted that he caused the deaths of babies on whom he operated for infantile tetanus.

In regards to Sims' discoveries, Durrenda Ojenunga wrote in 1993:

His fame and fortune were a result of unethical experimentation with powerless black women. Dr. Sims, "the father of gynecology", was the first doctor to perfect a successful technique for the cure of vesicovaginal fistula, yet despite his accolades, in his quest for fame and recognition, he manipulated the social institution of slavery to perform human experimentation, which by any standard is unacceptable.[24]

Terri Kapsalis writes, in Mastering the Female Pelvis, that "Sims' fame and wealth are as indebted to slavery and racism as they are to innovation, insight, and persistence, and he has left behind a frightening legacy of medical attitudes toward and treatments of women, particularly women of color."[81]

Drawing on Sims' published autobiography, case-histories, and correspondence, historian Stephen C. Kenny highlights how Sims' surgical treatment of enslaved infants suffering from neonatal tetanus was a typical, but tragically distinctive, feature in the career of an ambitious medical professional in the slaveowning South. Individual doctors like Sims and the profession were incentivized in multiple ways through the system of chattel slavery. Many physicians not only employed enslaved people in their practice, but also traded in enslaved people, while at the same time their medical research was advanced directly and significantly through the exploitation of the enslaved population.[35] In a related article exploring the types, frequency and functions of slave hospitals in the American South, Kenny identifies Sims' private 'negro infirmary' located behind his office on South Perry Street in Montgomery as an example of a "hospital-for-experimentation," where Sims also undertook a series of gruelling and dangerous invasive surgeries on enslaved men. Sims used the surgical opportunities presented by long neglected chronic–and often incurable–cases of illness and injuries among the enslaved to sharpen his skills and stake a claim for professional celebrity—all in the context of the profits to be made from human trafficking one of the South's busiest slave markets.[82]

Others, such as Harriet A. Washington and Rebekah Barber, have emphasized how "[e]ach naked, unanesthetized slave woman had to be forcibly restrained by other physicians through her shrieks of agony as Sims determinedly sliced, then sutured her genitalia" and argued that slaves were forced to hold each other down during these surgeries.[83][84]

Defense of Sims Edit

In his autobiography, Sims said he was indebted to the enslaved black women on whom he experimented.[58]

Physician and anthropologist L. Lewis Wall, writing in the Journal of Medical Ethics, has argued that fistula surgery on non-anesthetized patients would require cooperation from the patient, and would not be possible if the patient had actively resisted. He suggests that surviving documentation indicates that the women were trained to assist in their own surgical procedures and that the women consented to the surgeries, having been motivated by the serious medical and social nature of vesicovaginal and rectovaginal fistulas.[11]

Wall further observes that legally, consent was granted by the slaves' owners; enslaved black women, he acknowledges, were a "vulnerable population" with respect to medical experimentation. However, Wall also suggests that Sims obtained consent from the women themselves, citing an 1855 passage from the New York Medical Gazette and Journal of Health, where Sims wrote:

For this purpose [therapeutic surgical experimentation] I was fortunate in having three young healthy colored girls given to me by their owners in Alabama, I agreeing to perform no operation without the full consent of the patients, and never to perform any that would, in my judgment, jeopard life, or produce greater mischief on the injured organs—the owners agreeing to let me keep them (at my own expense) till I was thoroughly convinced whether the affection could be cured or not.[11]

During the twenty-first century controversy over the various statues of Sims, Deirdre Cooper Owens argued that "Sims has been painted as either a monstrous butcher or a benign figure who, despite his slaveowning status, wanted to cure all women from their distinctly gendered suffering."[85] She suggests that these opposing views are overly reductionist and that Sims' history is more nuanced. Indeed, Sims lived in a slave-holding society and expressed the racism and sexism that were considered normal during his time.

According to the Australian gynecologist and author Caroline M. de Costa,

Hideous as the accounts of his surgery may appear to sensitive 20th century eyes, undoubtedly Sims was at least partly motivated by a desire to improve the lot of his enslaved patients. In this, he was no different from many 19th century surgeons experimenting with the techniques that are the foundation of current surgical practice, gynaecological and otherwise. The lives of the slave women on whom Sims experimented would have been even more miserable without their subsequent cures, and the knowledge gained has been applied to fistula repair for thousands of women since.[67]

Legacy and honors Edit

 
J. Marion Sims statue, South Carolina Capitol grounds, Columbia, South Carolina.
  • On the title page of the reprint of an article, "History of the Discovery of Anesthesia", first published in the May 1877 number of the Virginia Medical Monthly, Sims listed his honors as:

    Author of "Silver Sutures in Surgery," "The Sims Operation for Vesico-Vaginal Fistula," "Uterine Diseases," "History of the Discovery of Anaesthesia", Etc., Etc.; Member of the Historical Society of New York; Surgeon to the Empress Eugenie; Delegate to Annual Conference of the Association for the Reform and Codification of the Law of Nations, 1879; Founder of the Woman's Hospital of the State of New York, and formerly Surgeon to the Same; Centennial President of the American Medical Association, Philadelphia, 1876; President of the International Medical Congress at Berne, 1877; Fellow of the American Medical Association; Permanent Member of the New York State Medical Society; Fellow of the Academy of Sciences, of the Academy of Medicine, of the Pathological Society, of the Neurological Society, of the County Medical Society, and of the Obstetrical Society of New York; Fellow of the American Gynaecological Association; Honorary Fellow of the State Medical Societies of Connecticut, Virginia, South Carolina, Alabama and Texas; Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Brussels; Honorary Fellow of the Obstetrical Societies of London, Dublin and Berlin, and of the Medical Society of Christiana [Oslo]; Knight of the Legion of Honor (France); Commander of Orders of Belgium, Germany, Austria, Russia, Spain, Portugal and Italy, Etc., Etc., Etc.[64]

  • A bronze statue by Ferdinand Freiherr von Miller (the younger), depicting Sims in surgical wear,[86] was erected in Bryant Park, in midtown Manhattan, New York, in 1894, then taken down in the 1920s amid subway construction, and in 1934 was moved to the northeastern corner of Central Park, at 103rd Street, opposite the New York Academy of Medicine.[58][87] The address delivered at its rededication was published in the Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine.[88] This was the first statue erected in the United States in honor of any physician. The statue became the center of protests in 2017 due to Sims' operations on enslaved black women.[89] It was defaced with the word "RACIST" and had the eyes painted red.[90] In April 2018, the New York City Public Design Commission voted unanimously to have the statue removed from Central Park and installed in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, near where Sims is buried.[87] (As of 2022, it had not yet been installed there.) Nature magazine published an editorial criticizing the removal, then retracted it after reader protests.[91][92][93][94][95][96][97][98][99]
  • In November 2017, author J.C. Hallman's article about Sims' Central Park statue, "Monumental Error"[100] appeared on the cover of Harper's Magazine. The article played a role in the broader discussion about Confederate monuments, and in a later op-ed for the Montgomery Advertiser, Hallman revealed Sims' career as a spy during the Civil War and the fraudulent history of another Sims monument in Montgomery, Alabama.[101]
  • Another memorial was installed on the grounds of his alma mater, Jefferson Medical College (now Thomas Jefferson University) in Philadelphia.[citation needed]
  • There is a statue on the grounds of the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery.[9] (dedicated in 1939[72]) In April 2018, when Silent Sam, a Confederate statue on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was doused with red ink and blood, Sims' statue had ketchup thrown on it while a skit about him was performed.[102] "An alternative statue of Sims's 'first cure', the young woman known as Anarcha, was erected in protest only to be stolen in the night."[72] This statue of Sims was originally intended to be one of Alabama's two statues in the National Statuary Hall Collection at the U.S. capitol.[103]
  • Another statue of Sims, installed in 1929, is at the South Carolina State House in Columbia;[104] in 2017, the mayor of Columbia, Stephen K. Benjamin, called for its removal, as have other protestors.[105][106]
  • A painting by Marshall Bouldin III, entitled Medical Giants of Alabama, that depicted Sims and other white men standing over a partially clothed black patient, was commissioned for $20,000 in 1982 (paid for by donors). It was on display at the University of Alabama at Birmingham's Center for Advanced Medical Studies, but was removed in late 2005 or early 2006 because of complaints from people offended by it as well as the ethical questions associated with Sims.[107][108]
  • The Medical University of South Carolina, whose predecessor Sims attended, set up around 1980 an endowed chair in his honor.[109] In February, 2018, the chair was renamed.[110] However, a "J. Marion Sims Chair" in obstetrics and gynecology still appears in a March 2018 program.[111] A J. Marion Sims Society, a student organization, existed there from 1923 to 1945.[112]
  • A Sims Memorial Address on Gynecology, delivered before the South Carolina Medical Society at Charleston, is documented from 1927.[113]
  • In 1950, a historical marker was erected near the site of his parents' farmhouse in Lancaster County, South Carolina, where he was born. Present at the dedication ceremony were Congressman James P. Richards and representatives of the American Medical Association, the Medical College of South Carolina, the University of South Carolina, the chairman of Lancaster's Marion Sims Memorial Hospital board, the state archivist of South Carolina, and four of Sims' children. Dr. Roderick McDonald, president of the South Carolina Medical Association, introduced the speaker, Dr. Seale Harris, past president of the Southern Medical Association and former editor of the Southern Medical Journal, whose biography of Sims, Woman's Surgeon: the Life Story of J. Marion Sims, had just been published.[114][9]
  • The medical college at the University of South Carolina is named Sims College in his honor; in June 2020, the university passed a resolution asking for the state to rename the college pursuant to the South Carolina Heritage Act.[115]
  • A cartoon of Sims appeared on the cover of the November 2017 issue of The Nation.[citation needed]
  • A J. Marion Sims Foundation was founded in 1995 in his home town of Lancaster, South Carolina. It has dispensed almost $50,000,000 in grants.[116]
  • The Marion Sims Memorial Hospital is located in Lancaster.
  • In Montgomery, Alabama, a historical marker at 37 South Perry St. marks the location of Sims' house and backyard hospital or infirmary. The building on the site is from the early twentieth century.[117]
  • In 1953, Sims was elected to the Alabama Hall of Fame.[23]
  • On April 3, 2018, Behind the Sheet, written by Charly Evon Simpson, was presented in New York at the Ensemble Studio Theatre. Its tagline read, "Philomena is a slave woman forced to assist her owner as he searches for a cure for fistulas. Everything changes when she becomes his patient."[118][119][120]

Contributions Edit

  • Vaginal surgery: fistula repair. Invented silver wire as a suture.
  • Instrumentation: Sims' speculum; Sims' sigmoid catheter. There is a petition campaign to have Sims' name removed from the devices he invented: "Sims uterine curette, uterine sound, vaginal retractor, uterine scissors, and rectal speculum." New names would be chosen by "a committee of POC (People of Color)."[121]
  • Exam and surgical positioning: Sims' position.
  • Fertility treatment: Insemination and postcoital test.
  • Cancer care: Sims argued for the admission of cancer patients to the Woman's Hospital, despite contemporary beliefs that the disease was contagious.
  • Abdominal surgery: Sims advocated a laparotomy to stop bleeding from bullet wounds to this area, repair the damage and drain the wound. His opinion was sought when President James Garfield was shot in an assassination attempt; Sims responded from Paris by telegram. Sims' recommendations later gained acceptance.[58]
  • Gallbladder surgery: In 1878, Sims drained a distended gallbladder and removed its stones. He published the case believing it was the first of its kind; however, a similar case had already been reported in Indianapolis in 1867.[58]

See also Edit

Archival material Edit

Papers of Dr. Sims—about 150 items— are held by the Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The collection has been microfilmed and some is available online. A small number of letters are in the libraries of the Medical University of South Carolina and Duke University. [122]

References Edit

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  2. ^ Sims 1889, p. 23.
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Examinations of the ethical questions regarding Sims Edit

  • Critical of Sims
    • Axelsen, Diana E. (Fall 1985). "Women as Victims of Medical Experimentation: J. Marion Sims' Surgery on Slave Women, 1845-1850". SAGE. 2 (2): 10–13. PMID 11645827.
      • Axelsen, Diana E. (1993). "Women as Victims of Medical Experimentation: J. Marion Sims' Surgery on Slave Women, 1845–1850". In Cott, Nancy F. (ed.). History of Women in the United States: Historical Articles on Women's Lives and Activities. Vol. 11, Women's Bodies, Health and Childbirth. Berlin: K. G. Saur. pp. 93–100. doi:10.1515/9783110976328.93. ISBN 3110976323.
    • McGregor, Deborah Kuhn (1990). Sexual surgery and the origins of gynecology: J. Marion Sims, his hospital, and his patients. New York: Garland. ISBN 978-0824037680.
    • Ojanuga, Durrenda (March 1, 1993). "The medical ethics of the 'father of gynaecology', Dr J Marion Sims" (PDF). Journal of Medical Ethics. 19 (1): 28–31. doi:10.1136/jme.19.1.28. PMC 1376165. PMID 8459435.
    • Sartin, Jeffrey S. (May 2004). "J. Marion Sims, the Father of Gynecology: Hero or Villain?". Southern Medical Journal. 97 (5): 500–505. doi:10.1097/00007611-200405000-00017. PMID 15180027. S2CID 6500614 – via Gale Academic Onefile. Comments on the article of O'Leary just cited.
    • Gonzalez, David (March 2, 2014). "Sculpture of Paradox: Doctor as Hero and Villain". The New York Times.
    • Holland, Brynn (August 29, 2017). "The 'Father of Modern Gynecology' Performed Shocking Experiments on Enslaved Women. His use of Black bodies as medical test subjects falls into a history that includes the Tuskegee syphilis experiment and Henrietta Lacks". history.com.
    • Washington., Harriet A. (September 21, 2017). "Statues that perpetuate lies should not stand". Nature. 549 (7672): 309. Bibcode:2017Natur.549..309W. doi:10.1038/549309a. PMID 28933446. S2CID 4460808.
    • Hallman, J. C. (November 2017). "Monumental Error. Will New York City finally tear down a statue?". Harper's. November 2017.
    • Savel, Richard H.; Munro, Cindy L. (January 2018). "History Is a Tangled Mess: Medical Progress, But at What Cost?". American Journal of Critical Care. 27 (1): 6–8. doi:10.4037/ajcc2018994. PMID 29292269.
    • Downes, Heidi (October 2, 2019). "The forgotten women of gynaecology". British Journal of Midwifery. 27 (10): 614–615. doi:10.12968/bjom.2019.27.10.614. S2CID 210649375. L. L. Wall responded in the same journal in 2021; cited below.
    • Cronin, Monica (November 2020). "Anarcha, Betsey, Lucy, and the women whose names were not recorded: The legacy of J Marion Sims". Anaesthesia and Intensive Care. 48 (3_suppl): 6–13. doi:10.1177/0310057X20966606. PMID 33249851. S2CID 227236696.
  • Defenses of Sims
    • Moir, Chassar (December 7, 1940). "J. Marion Sims and the Vesico-Vaginal Fistula: Then and Now". British Medical Journal. 2 (4170): 773–778. doi:10.1136/bmj.2.4170.773. PMC 2179954. PMID 20783426.
    • Word, S. Buford (1972). "The Father of Gynecology". American Association for the History of Medicine. 9: 33–39.
    • Kaiser, I H (December 15, 1978). "Reappraisals of J. Marion Sims". American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. 132 (8): 878–884. doi:10.1016/0002-9378(78)90715-9. PMID 367162.
    • Lerner, Barron J. (October 28, 2003). "Scholars Argue over Legacy of Surgeon Who Was Lionized, then Vilified". The New York Times.
    • de Costa, Caroline M. (June 2003). "James Marion Sims: some speculations and a new position" (PDF). The Medical Journal of Australia. 178 (12): 660–663. doi:10.5694/j.1326-5377.2003.tb05401.x. PMID 12797862. S2CID 77028975.
    • O'Leary, J. Patrick (May 2004). "J. Marion Sims: a defense of the father of gynecology". Southern Medical Journal. 97 (5): 427–429. doi:10.1097/00007611-200405000-00001. PMID 15180013 – via Gale Academic Onefile.
    • Wall, L. Lewis (July 2007). "Did J. Marion Sims deliberately addict his first fistula patients to opium?". Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences. 62 (3): 336–356. doi:10.1093/jhmas/jrl045. PMID 17082217.
    • Wall, L. L. (June 2006). "The medical ethics of Dr J Marion Sims: a fresh look at the historical record". Journal of Medical Ethics. 32 (6): 346–350. doi:10.1136/jme.2005.012559. ISSN 0306-6800. PMC 2563360. PMID 16731734.
    • West, M J; Irvine, L M (February 2015). "The eponymous Dr James Marion Sims MD, LLD (1813-1883)". Journal of Medical Biography. 23 (1): 35–45. doi:10.1177/0967772013480604. PMID 24585590. S2CID 10121606.
    • Petros, Peter; Abendstein, Burghard; Browning, Andrew (2018). "In defense of J Marion Sims". International Urogynecology Journal. 29 (11): 1563–1564. doi:10.1007/s00192-018-3708-1. PMID 29951910. S2CID 49475269.
    • Wall, L Lewis (March–April 2018). "J. Marion Sims and the Vesicovaginal Fistula: Historical Understanding, Medical Ethics, and Modern Political Sensibilities". Female Pelvic Medicine & Reconstructive Surgery. 24 (2): 66–75. doi:10.1097/SPV.0000000000000546. PMID 29474277. S2CID 3519992.
    • Vernon, Leonard F. (August 2019). "J. Marion Sims, MD: Why He and His Accomplishments Need to Continue to be Recognized [—] a Commentary and Historical Review". Journal of the National Medical Association. 111 (4): 436–446. doi:10.1016/j.jnma.2019.02.002. eISSN 1943-4693. ISSN 0027-9684. PMID 30851980. S2CID 73725863.
    • Wall, L. Lewis (April 2020). "The controversial Dr. J. Marion Sims (1813–1883)". International Urogynecology Journal. 31 (7): 1299–1303. doi:10.1007/s00192-020-04301-9. ISSN 0937-3462. PMID 32328679. S2CID 216076564.
    • Wall, L. Lewis (March 2, 2021). "J Marion Sims and the 'forgotten women of gynaecology'". British Journal of Midwifery. 29 (3): 172–174. doi:10.12968/bjom.2021.29.3.172. S2CID 233858519.
    • Wall, L. Lewis (March 2022). "The Damnatio Memoriae of J. Marion Sims". Pelviperineology. 41 (1): 63–72. doi:10.34057/PPj.2022.41.01.2022-1-3. S2CID 248029189 – via Gale Academic Onefile.
  • Unclassified
    • Christmas, Monica (November 2021). "#SayHerName: Should Obstetrics and Gynecology Reckon with the Legacy of JM Sims?". Reproductive Sciences. 28 (11): 3282–3284. doi:10.1007/s43032-021-00567-6. PMID 33877641. S2CID 233308868.
    • Wailoo, Keith (October 16, 2018). "Historical Aspects of Race and Medicine: The Case of J. Marion Sims". Journal of the American Medical Association. 320 (15): 1529–1530. doi:10.1001/jama.2018.11944. PMID 30264160. S2CID 52880128.
    • Sayej, Nadja (April 21, 2018). "J Marion Sims: controversial statue taken down but debate still rages. New York City has removed the likeness of the 19th-century doctor and 'father of gynecology' who experimented on black women from Central Park". The Guardian.
    • Doss, Harriet E. Amos (2017). "Enslaved Women Surgical Patients of J. Marion Sims in Antebellum Alabama—Sisterhood of Shared Suffering". In Ashmore, Susan Youngblood; Dorr, Lisa Lindquist (eds.). Alabama Women: Their Lives and Times. University of Georgia Press. pp. 75–89. ISBN 9780820350776.
    • Spettel, S.; White, M.D. (June 2011). "The Portrayal of J. Marion Sims' Controversial Surgical Legacy". The Journal of Urology. 185 (6): 2424–2427. doi:10.1016/j.juro.2011.01.077. PMID 21511295.

Further reading (arranged by date) Edit

  • Sims, J. Marion (1866). Clinical notes on uterine surgery: With Special Reference to the Management of the Sterile Condition. London: Robert Hardwicke. Retrieved July 16, 2015.
  • Bozeman, Nathan (1884). "History of the clamp suture of the late Dr. J. Marion Sims, and why it was abandoned by the profession". Gynecological Transactions. 9. [The link is to a reprint. The title at the beginning of the text is "The clamp suture and the range of its applicability, considered in relation to the cure of the injuries incident to parturition, with statistics."]
  • Sims, J. Marion (1889). Marion-Sims, H (ed.). The Story of My Life. New York: D. Appleton & Company.
  • Wilson, J. G.; Fiske, J., eds. (1900). "Sims, James Marion" . Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. Vol. V. New York: D. Appleton. pp. 540–541.
  • Harris, Seale; Brown, Frances Williams (1950). Woman's surgeon: the life story of J. Marion Sims. New York.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  • Heaton, C E (1956). "The influence of J. Marion Sims on gynecology". Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine. 32 (9): 685–688. PMC 1805969. PMID 13356107.
  • Speert, H. (1958). Obstetrics and Gynecologic Milestones. New York: Macmillan. pp. 442–454.
  • Savitt, Todd L. (August 1982). "The Use of Blacks for Medical Experimentation and Demonstration in the Old South". Journal of Southern History. 48 (3): 331–348. doi:10.2307/2207450. JSTOR 2207450. PMID 11645888.
  • Richardson, D. A. (January 1994). "Ethics in gynecologic surgical innovation". American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. 170 (1 Pt 1): 1–6. doi:10.1016/s0002-9378(94)70373-6. PMID 8296808.
  • Gamble, Vanessa (November 1997). "Under the Shadow of Tuskegee: African Americans and Health Care". American Journal of Public Health. 87 (11): 1773–8. doi:10.2105/AJPH.87.11.1773. PMC 1381160. PMID 9366634.
  • Kapsalis, Terri (2002). "Mastering the Female Pelvis: Race and the Tools of Reproduction". In Wallace-Sanders, Kimberly (ed.). Skin Deep, Spirit Strong: The Black Female Body in American Culture. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. pp. 263–300. ISBN 978-0472067077.
  • Schwartz, Marie Jenkins (2006). Birthing a Slave: Motherhood and Medicine in the American South.
  • Spencer, Thomas (January 21, 2006). "UAB shelves divisive portrait of medical titans: Gynecologist's practices at heart of debate". Birmingham News.
  • Washington, Harriet A. (2008). Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. Anchor. ISBN 978-0385509930.
  • Kenny, Stephen C. (January 2010). "'A Dictate of Both Interest and Mercy'? Slave Hospitals in the Antebellum South". Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences. 65 (1): 1–47. doi:10.1093/jhmas/jrp019. PMID 19549698.
  • Straughn Jr., J. Michael; Gandy, Roy E.; Rodning, Charles B. (July 2012). "The core competencies of James Marion Sims, MD". Annals of Surgery. 256 (1): 193–202. doi:10.1097/SLA.0b013e318249ce3b. PMID 22514000.
  • Owens, Deirdre Cooper (2017). Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology.
  • Kenny, Stephen C. (June 12, 2020). "J. Marion Sims statue: Questionable monument in a questionable place". Montgomery Advertiser. Montgomery, Alabama.
  • Sheather, Julian (2020). "Judging history's heroes and monsters". British Medical Journal. 371: m4554. doi:10.1136/bmj.m4554. PMID 33303486. S2CID 228084537.
  • Gillespie, John, Jr. (Spring 2022). "Anarcha's Science of the Flesh: Towards an Afropessimist Theory of Science". Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience. 8 (1). doi:10.28968/cftt.v8i1.35229. S2CID 248013748.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

Video Edit

  • Carples, Josh (2019), Remembering Anarcha (Documentary), Kirby I. Bland, Michelle Browder, LaToya Clark, Harriet E. Amos Doss, 803 Films, Carolyn Jean's Son Visions, Terrible Master Films

External links Edit

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to J. Marion Sims.

October 16, 2023
marion, sims, james, marion, sims, january, 1813, november, 1883, american, physician, field, surgery, most, famous, work, development, surgical, technique, repair, vesicovaginal, fistula, severe, complication, obstructed, childbirth, also, remembered, inventi. James Marion Sims January 25 1813 November 13 1883 was an American physician in the field of surgery His most famous work was the development of a surgical technique for the repair of vesicovaginal fistula a severe complication of obstructed childbirth 3 He is also remembered for inventing Sims speculum Sims sigmoid catheter and the Sims position Against significant opposition he established in New York the first hospital specifically for women He was forced out of the hospital he founded because he insisted on treating cancer patients he played a small role in the creation of the nation s first cancer hospital which opened after his death 4 J Marion SimsJ Marion Sims engraving after photograph ca 1880BornJames Marion SimsJanuary 25 1813 1813 01 25 1 Lancaster County South Carolina U S DiedNovember 13 1883 1883 11 14 aged 70 2 New York City U S Resting placeGreen Wood Cemetery Brooklyn New York U S EducationSouth Carolina CollegeMedical College of CharlestonAlma materJefferson Medical CollegeOccupationSurgeonKnown forvesicovaginal surgerySpouseTheresa JonesChildren9RelativesJohn Allan Wyeth son in law Marion Sims Wyeth grandson John Allan Wyeth grandson SignatureHe was one of the most famous and venerated physicians in the country In 1876 he was elected President of the American Medical Association He was one of the first American physicians to become famous in Europe 5 He openly boasted that he was the second wealthiest doctor in the country 6 However as medical ethicist Barron H Lerner states one would be hard pressed to find a more controversial figure in the history of medicine 7 A statue in his honor the first statue in the United States in honor of a physician 8 was erected in 1894 in Bryant Park in New York City but removed in 2018 There are ethical questions raised by how he developed his surgical techniques 9 He operated without anesthesia on enslaved black women who like prisoners could not meaningfully consent because they could not refuse 9 7 In the twentieth century this was condemned as an improper use of human experimental subjects and Sims was described as a prime example of progress in the medical profession made at the expense of a vulnerable population 9 He has been called a butcher and compared to Nazi physician Josef Mengele 10 Sims practices were defended as consistent with the US in the era in which he lived by physician and anthropologist L Lewis Wall 11 and other medical historians According to Sims the enslaved black women were willing and had no better option 7 Sims was a prolific writer and his published reports on his medical experiments together with his own 471 page autobiography 12 summarized in an address just after his death 13 are the main sources of knowledge about him and his career His positive self presentation has in the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries been subject to revision Contents 1 Childhood education and early career 2 Practice in Montgomery 3 Medical experimentation on enslaved women 3 1 Repair of vesicovaginal fistulas 3 2 Experimental subjects 3 3 Anesthesia 4 Trismus nascentium 5 New York the Woman s Hospital 6 Sims and the Confederacy 7 Later career 8 The first cancer hospital 9 Death 10 Criticism of Sims 11 Defense of Sims 12 Legacy and honors 13 Contributions 14 See also 15 Archival material 16 References 17 Examinations of the ethical questions regarding Sims 18 Further reading arranged by date 19 Video 20 External linksChildhood education and early career EditJames Marion Sims who preferred to be called Marion was born in Lancaster County South Carolina 14 the son of John and Mahala Mackey Sims His father Colonel John Sims now 1856 of Texas participated in the War of 1812 being stationed at Charleston His paternal grandfather was one of Marion s men his great grandfather was with Washington at Braddock s defeat His maternal grandfather Charles Mackey was taken prisoner by Banastre Tarleton and would have been hanged but for the intervention of his wife 15 For the first twelve years of his life Sims and his family lived in Lancaster Village north of Hanging Rock Creek where his father owned a store Sims later wrote of his early school days there 13 4 5 After his father was elected sheriff of Lancaster County he sent Sims in 1825 to the newly established Franklin Academy in Lancaster In 1832 after two years of study at the predecessor of the University of South Carolina South Carolina College where he was a member of the Euphradian Society Sims worked with Dr Churchill Jones in Lancaster South Carolina He took a three month course at the Medical College of Charleston predecessor of the Medical University of South Carolina but found it too rigorous 16 He moved to Philadelphia Pennsylvania in 1834 and enrolled at the Jefferson Medical College from which he graduated in 1835 as a lackluster student who showed little ambition after receiving his medical degree 7 As he put it I felt no particular interest in my profession at the beginning of it apart from making a living I was really ready at any time and at any moment to take up anything that offered or that held out any inducement of fortune because I knew that I could never make a fortune out of the practice of medicine 13 8 He returned to Lancaster to practice As of that date he had had no clinical experience logged no actual hospital time and had no experience diagnosing illnesses 16 After his first two patients infants died Sims was despondent He left and set up a practice in Mount Meigs near Montgomery Alabama 13 7 He described the settlement in a letter to his future wife Theresa Jones as nothing but a pile of gin houses stables blacksmith shops grog shops taverns and stores thrown together in one promiscuous huddle 12 374 He was in Mount Meigs from 1835 to 1837 17 6 Sims visited Lancaster in 1836 to marry Theresa whom he had met many years earlier when a student in Lancaster She was the daughter of B C Jones and the niece of Churchill Jones and had studied at the South Carolina Female Collegiate Institute 12 177 178 18 In 1837 Sims and his wife moved to Cubahatchee Alabama where they remained until 1840 17 6 He was a plantation physician 16 who had a partnership in a large practice among rich plantations 13 7 Sims became known for operations on clubfeet cleft palates and crossed eyes 16 This was his first experience treating enslaved black women whose owners summoned Sims to treat them Being a plantation physician was not as lucrative as Sims hoped a life as a doctor would be 19 77 Practice in Montgomery EditIn 1840 the couple moved to Montgomery Alabama 13 7 8 where they lived until 1853 17 10 Sims later described this period as the most memorable time of his career 20 Within a few years he had the largest surgical practice in the State and the largest practice of any doctor in Montgomery up to that time 17 7 He was immensely popular and greatly beloved 17 8 When he returned to the city for a visit in 1877 he was treated as a hero 21 nbsp Sims Surgical Infirmary for NegroesIn Montgomery Sims continued essentially his practice as a plantation physician treating the enslaved who then made up two thirds of the city s population 22 34 He built a hospital or Surgical Infirmary for Negroes for those women their owners brought him for treatment 13 9 It began with four beds but it was so successful he added a second floor doubling capacity to eight beds One source says it expanded to twelve beds It has been called the first woman s hospital in history 23 It was also the first hospital specifically for Blacks in the United States In 1840 the field of gynecology did not exist there was no training on the subject for Sims or anyone else 13 The only books were on midwifery Medical students did not study pregnancy childbirth or gynecological diseases Student doctors were often trained on dummies to deliver babies They did not see their first clinical cases of women until beginning their practices 24 28 The practice of examining the female organs was considered repugnant by doctors Sims shared this view remarking in his autobiography that if there was anything I hated it was investigating the organs of the female pelvis 22 34 Medical experimentation on enslaved women EditRepair of vesicovaginal fistulas Edit nbsp Site of Sims office in Montgomery Alabama In 1845 Sims was brought a woman with a condition he had not seen before vesicovaginal fistula Although not fatal in the nineteenth century vesicovaginal fistulas were one of the most loathsome and disagreeable maladies to which females are subject 25 and a common socially destructive and a terrible complication of childbirth that affected many women 11 There was no effective cure or treatment In an era without adequate birth control and rudimentary knowledge of the processes of pregnancy and childbirth women who gave birth frequently experienced complications afterwards 24 Vesicovaginal fistulas occur when the woman s bladder cervix and vagina become trapped between the fetal skull and the woman s pelvis cutting off blood flow and leading to tissue death The necrotic tissue later sloughs off leaving a hole Following this injury as urine forms it leaks from the vagina leading to a form of incontinence Because a continuous stream of urine leaks from the vagina it is difficult to keep the area clean Such personal hygiene issues often lead to marginalization from society as well as vaginal irritation scarring and loss of vaginal function Sims also worked to repair rectovaginal fistulas a similar condition in which flatulence and feces escape from the rectum through a tear in the tissue separating it from the vagina thus leading to fecal incontinence 11 When Sims went to see a patient with an injured pelvis from a fall from a horse he placed her in a knee chest position and inserted his finger into the vagina This allowed Sims to see the vagina clearly and spurred him to investigate fistula treatment 24 13 In order to facilitate the examination of patients he soon developed a precursor to the modern speculum using a pewter spoon and strategically placed mirrors As a result he has generally been credited with the instrument s invention 26 nbsp Sims vaginal speculum Sims however was not the first to successfully treat a vesicovaginal fistula not even in the United States Dr John Peter Mettauer had successfully surgically repaired one in Virginia in 1838 and Dr George Hayward in Boston the following year 27 28 Moreover Henry van Roonhuyse s clinical treatise entitled Medico Chirurgical Observations 1676 had outlined essential repair steps for such conditions that are recognizable even today 29 Between 1845 49 Sims performed experimental surgery on enslaved black women to treat vaginal problems He added a second story to his four bed hospital doubling its capacity 13 10 He developed techniques that have since formed the basis of modern vaginal surgery one key component was silver wire which he had a jeweler prepare 30 Sims vaginal speculum described above aided in vaginal examination and surgery The rectal examination position in which the patient is on the left side with the right knee flexed against the abdomen and the left knee slightly flexed is also named for him Experimental subjects Edit Occasionally Sims conducted experimental surgery on white women but his main subjects were twelve enslaved black women with fistulas who he treated at his own expense in his backyard hospital 31 32 20 22 33 They were brought to him by their owners Sims searched for patients with this fistula and succeeded in finding six or seven women 13 9 Sims took responsibility for their care on the condition that the owners provide clothing and pay any taxes Sims provided food 26 He purchased one woman specifically in order to experiment surgically when her owner refused to allow Sims to treat her otherwise 22 35 The use of enslaved people for medical research was not considered controversial in the Antebellum South 34 A prospectus from the 1830s of the South Carolina Medical College then the South s leading medical school pointed out to prospective students that it had an advantage of a peculiar character No place in the United States offers as great opportunities for the acquisition of anatomical knowledge subjects being obtained from among the colored population in sufficient number for every purpose and proper dissection carried on without offending any individual in the community Those impediments which exist in so many other places to the prosecution of this study are not here thrown in the path of the Student public feeling being rather favourable than hostile to the advancement of the Science of Anatomy 35 36 190 The college announced in advertisements in the Charleston papers that it had set up a surgery operating room for negroes and offered to treat without charge while it was in session any interesting cases sent by their owners for the benefit and instruction of their pupils They extended the offer to free persons of color 36 191 The advertisement ends by pointing out that their sole objective was to promote the interest of Medical Education 36 193 Sims named three enslaved black women in his autobiography Anarcha Betsy and Lucy Each of them suffered from fistula and all were subjects of his surgical experimentation 7 Sims conducted experimental surgery on each of them several times including operating on Anarcha thirty times before the repair of her fistulas was declared a success 24 Anarcha suffered from both vesicovaginal and rectovaginal fistulas which Sims struggled to repair 11 Notwithstanding repeated failures during four years time he kept his six patients and operated until he tired out his doctor assistants and finally had to rely upon his patients to assist him to operate 13 10 Unlike his previous essays which included at least a brief description of his patients the article issued in The American Journal of the Medical Sciences omits any identifying characteristics of Anarcha Betsy or Lucy 37 Anarcha Lucy and Betsy are memorialized in the statue Mothers of Gynecology unveiled in Montgomery Alabama on September 24 2021 38 Sims former collaborator Nathan Bozeman later supplied the names of at least four other African American women treated by Sims during this period Ann McRee 16 treated by Sims for fistula in 1849 39 2 32 19 21 Lavinia Boudurant 13 had a bladder calculus removed by Sims in 1850 32 23 Delia 23 Dr Sims own servant slave who between 1850 and 1853 underwent ten or more operations for fistula repair 32 24 Julia McDuffie 20 operated on by Sims for fistula closure in March 1853 and again in June 1853 by Bozeman after Sims departure for New York 32 25 27 42 45 Anesthesia Edit Although anesthesia had very recently been used experimentally Sims did not use any anesthetic during his procedures on these three women 7 Ether anesthesia was first publicly demonstrated in Boston in 1846 a year after Sims began his experimental surgery Sims himself indicated that he was unaware at the time of the use of diethyl ether 40 11 26 For his era however Sims was well informed and subscribed to medical journals He must have read one of the many reports about research into anesthesia where religious objections to anesthesia were raised 41 42 43 44 45 As late as 1853 when Sims s fistula experiments were concluded and reports on them were being published many physicians still doubted chloroform s safety and guidelines for its proper administration during surgery had yet to be devised and published 46 In addition a common belief at the time was that black people did not feel as much pain as white people 47 Given this Sims did not anesthetize the women he operated on while developing his fistula repair technique Anesthesia was itself still experimental early anesthetic agents were much more dangerous than the replacements developed in the twentieth century Dosing was also imprecise underdosing did not kill the pain overdosing could and sometimes did kill the patient Chloroform could be obtained from a druggist but nitrous oxide and the highly flammable ether had to be manufactured by the surgeon on the spot In Sims day surgeons were trained to operate quickly on unanesthetized patients Anesthesia was first used in dentistry and was just being announced as an exciting novelty in privately published pamphlets some claiming credit for the anesthetic s first use at the same time as Sims fistula repair surgeries 48 49 Perhaps ironically Sims later became an expert on anesthesia publishing on nitrous oxide in 1868 50 and in 1874 on chloroform 51 In 1874 Sims addressed the New York State Medical Society on The Discovery of Anaesthesia in which he claimed that Americans had discovered the practice before the British 52 53 and in 1880 he delivered a paper published soon afterwards at the New York Academy of Medicine about a death from anesthesia 13 22 54 Sims also committed other blunders due to the primitive knowledge about sanitation and infection in surgical theaters at the time One patient named Lucy nearly died from sepsis after Sims operated on her without anesthetics in the presence of twelve doctors experimentally using a sponge during the procedure to wipe urine from her bladder 24 Sims negligently left the sponge in her urethra and bladder 33 Although Sims eschewed using anesthesia during surgery he did frequently administer opium to the women afterwards which was accepted therapeutic practice of the day 55 However the use of opium was primarily used to ensure that these women operated on would not run away in response to the excruciating pain of the procedure 56 Sims eventually perfected his technique One of his key developments was the introduction in 1849 of silver wire as a suture thus avoiding the infections associated with silk sutures or the potential poisoning from using lead sutures as Mettauer had done in 1838 5 13 10 Sims published an account of his successful repair of Anarcha s suture using the silver wire in his surgical reports of 1852 9 57 He proceeded to repair fistulas in several other enslaved black women 58 According to Durrenda Ojanuga after Sims successful treatment of Anarcha he was asked by many white women to repair vesicovaginal fistulas but most of them were apparently unable to endure the pain of the operation 59 However the Journal of Medical Ethics reports a case study of one white woman whose fistula was repaired by Sims without the use of anesthesia during a series of three operations in 1849 11 Sims later moved to New York to found a Woman s Hospital where he performed the operation on white women Here there are some discrepancies regarding whether he used anesthesia there Ojanuga has claimed he did not but L L Wall suggests that as of 1857 Sims did not use anesthesia to perform fistula surgery on white women citing Sims lecture to the New York Academy of Medicine of November 18 that year wherein Sims asserted that he never used anesthesia for fistula surgery because the procedure was not painful enough to justify the risks of administering it Wall notes that while Sims refusal to use anesthetic seems shocking to us now Sims was expressing the contemporary sensibilities of the mid 1800s particularly among surgeons who began their practice in the pre anesthetic era 24 47 11 Trismus nascentium EditDuring his early medical years Sims also became interested in trismus nascentium also known as neonatal tetanus that occurs in newborns A nineteenth century doctor described it as a disease that has been almost constantly fatal commonly in the course of a few days the women are so persuaded of its inevitable fatality that they seldom or ever call for the assistance of our art 60 Trismus nascentium is a form of generalised tetanus Infants who have not acquired passive immunity from the mother having been immunised are at risk for this disease It usually occurs through infection of the unhealed umbilical stump particularly when the stump is cut with a non sterile instrument In the twenty first century neonatal tetanus mostly occurs in developing countries particularly those with the least developed healthcare infrastructure It is rare in developed countries 61 Trismus nascentium is now recognized to be the result of unsanitary practices and nutritional deficiencies but in the nineteenth century its cause was unknown and many enslaved African children contracted this disease Medical historians believe that the conditions of the quarters of enslaved people were the cause Sims alluded to the idea that sanitation and living conditions played a role in its contraction writing that w henever there are poverty and filth and laziness or where the intellectual capacity is cramped the moral and social feelings blunted there it will be oftener found Wealth a cultivated intellect a refined mind an affectionate heart are comparatively exempt from the ravages of this unmercifully fatal malady But expose this class to the same physical causes and they become equal sufferers with the first 16 Sims also thought trismus nascentium developed from skull bone movement during protracted births To test this Sims used a shoemaker s awl to pry the skull bones of enslaved infants into alignment These experiments had a 100 fatality rate Sims often performed autopsies on the corpses which he kept for further research on the condition 16 35 He blamed these fatalities on the sloth and ignorance of their mothers and the black midwives who attended them not the extensive experimental surgeries that he conducted upon the babies 35 62 63 New York the Woman s Hospital Edit nbsp Woman s Hospital New York City 1855 nbsp Woman s Hospital New York City 1870Sims moved to New York in 1853 reluctantly because of his health He decided to focus on diseases of women He had an office at 267 Madison Avenue 64 In 1860 a Charleston South Carolina newspaper described his success as splendid and called him the happiest man in New York 65 In 1855 he founded the Woman s Hospital which not counting his own backyard infirmary was the first hospital for women in the United States At its inception Woman s Hospital s primary purpose was to repair vesico vaginal fistulas using Sims technique 66 24 in service to the poor No pay patients were admitted 12 299 Located on Madison Avenue and 29th Street in a rented four story house a location deliberately chosen near Sims home the hospital s thirty beds were quickly filled In the beginning Sims operated without assistance from other doctors performing one fistula repair each day Many of his patients were poor Irish immigrant women 67 68 His project met with universal opposition from the New York medical community 13 11 instead it was due to prominent women that he established it As Sims related they were visited by prominent doctors who endeavored to convince them that they were making a mistake that they had been deceived and that no such hospital was needed to treat their condition 13 12 13 He recalled that I was called a quack and a humbug and the hospital was pronounced a fraud Still it went on with its work 13 13 In 1857 the New York State Legislature granted the hospital a formal charter and 50 000 for a permanent home while the city of New York granted it the land between Fourth now Park and Lexington Avenues and 49th and 50th Streets in Manhattan to build its new premises the site of today s Waldorf Astoria Hotel Sims would go to Europe in 1861 to study hospital architecture particularly the new pavilion plan as part of the planning of the new buildings The first pavilion was completed in 1866 a second was finished in 1872 67 69 In the Woman s Hospital Sims usually performed his operations on indigent women in an operating theatre so that medical students and other doctors could view it as was considered fundamental to medical education at the time Some patients remained in the hospital indefinitely and underwent repeated procedures 22 why When Sims addressed the American Medical Association in 1858 on the topic Treatment of the results of obstructed labor the charts which illustrated it caused the lady auditors to vacate the gallery 70 Sims and the Confederacy EditSims Southern sympathies were no secret he was no abolitionist and even in New York many of his patients were Southern ladies As the American Civil War drew near this practice fell away and he did not feel comfortable remaining in New York 66 27 28 In 1861 Sims who considered himself a loyal Southerner moved to Europe There he toured hospitals at first primarily for the purpose of researching hospital architecture for the new premises of his Woman s Hospital in New York then still in the planning stages but his renown soon permitted him to demonstrate his vesicovaginal repair surgery multiple times First he arrived in Dublin and performed one in front of Dr Fleetwood Churchill and other colleagues He then proceeded to Edinburgh to see Sir James Young Simpson operate on dysmenorrhea but evidently did not think it well done From there he went to London and performed a second fistula repair with several colleagues on hand to observe including Dr Thomas Spencer Wells soon to be appointed Queen Victoria s household surgeon The patient however died within six days because as the autopsy showed Sims had inadvertently closed the patient s ureter Undaunted he went to Paris in September 1861 where he performed fistula repairs at the Beaujon the Hopital St Louis the Hotel Dieu and La Charite Afterwards Sims was called to Brussels to operate there before returning to Paris These surgeries greatly enhanced Sims s reputation and he planned on traveling to Vienna to demonstrate the procedure there when another case from a colleague arrived in the French capital and eventually caused him to cancel his trip to Austria 13 22 46 Sims returned to the US in January 1862 aboard the Great Eastern and back in New York he favorably reported on the pavilion plan and convinced the board of the Woman s Hospital to adopt it He then returned to Europe in July 1862 intending to return to New York for six months out of the year to earn enough to allow his family to stay in Europe However Sims discovered that a remunerative practice to support his family working on fistula patients in Paris was possible and so he decided to remain in Europe until the cessation of hostilities in the USA 22 46 16 13 He simultaneously ran consulting rooms in Paris Berlin and London 71 69 However according to J C Hallman Sims was actually in Europe as one of several government agents of the Confederacy who were seeking money loans diplomatic recognition of their new government which never came to pass along with supplies and ships An intercepted letter informed Lincoln s Secretary of State William H Seward that Sims was secessionist in sentiment and that his purpose in going abroad at this time is believed to be hostile to the government as Seward reported to U S diplomats in Europe 72 According to the U S Minister in Brussels Henry Shelton Sanford Sims was a violent secessionist and his movements in Europe had given color to the opinion that he was a spy 72 Possibly the most celebrated episode in Sims life was his summons in 1863 to treat Empress Eugenie for a fistula which was widely reported and helped Sims to solidify his global surgical reputation 16 But according to Hallman no source confirms that Eugenie had any documented medical problem at all Sims visits to the palace were semi diplomatic Confederate visits and the illness an element of subterfuge to escape the eyes of U S Federal diplomats who had their eyes on Sims Eugenie became an ardent disciple of the Confederacy 72 In 1864 Sims moved to London from his previous base in Paris for the education of his children He published Clinical Notes on Uterine Surgery simultaneously in English French and German London Paris and Berlin in 1865 this work described novel methods of treatment which were not readily adopted by the profession but which in a few years would revolutionize the practice of gynecology 69 Sims remained in Europe until after the end of Civil War in September 1868 opening an office upon his return to New York at 13 East 28th Street in Manhattan 13 After the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed in 1868 Sims unsurprisingly commented that it was a dreadful mistake to give the negro the franchise 72 Two years later offering a toast on board the steamer Atlantic returning to Europe he declared that in the aftermath of the war the South had been degraded beyond the level of the meanest slave that ever wore a shackle 72 At the same time Sims argued that it was puerile for the South to sulk in its loss He called for an acceptance of the outcome of the war including the Fifteenth Amendment It is folly to talk of the lost cause he said 72 Later career Edit nbsp Statue of Sims in New York s Central Park removed in April 2018 Having treated royalty after his return to the United States Sims raised his fees in his private practice He thus effectively limited it to wealthy women although he always had a long roll of charity patients 73 25 He became known for the Battey surgery which contributed to his honorable reputation clarification needed This involved the removal of both ovaries It became a popular treatment to relieve insanity epilepsy hysteria diseased uterus and other disorders of the nerves as mental illness was called at the time At the time these were believed to be caused by disorders of the female reproductive system 22 Sims received honors and medals for his successful operations in many countries Since the twentieth century the necessity of many of these surgeries has been questioned by whom He frequently performed surgery for what were considered gynecological issues such as clitoridectomies then believed to control hysteria or improper behavior related to sexuality These were done at the requests of the women s husbands or fathers who were permitted under the law to commit the women to surgery involuntarily 58 Under the patronage of Napoleon III in 1870 Sims organized the American Anglo Ambulance Corps which treated wounded soldiers from both sides at the Battle of Sedan 58 The first cancer hospital Edit nbsp Thomas Eakins The Agnew Clinic 1889 illustrates a typical scene inside a medical amphitheater in an American teaching hospital in this case at the University of Pennsylvania Sims operated frequently in such a setting at the Woman s Hospital In 1871 Sims returned to New York and resumed working at the Woman s Hospital where he provided surgical treatment for women with cancer At the time cancer was considered to be a disease specific to the lower socioeconomic classes and feared by some to be contagious or even sexually transmitted In response to Sims efforts the highly influential Ladies Board of the Woman s Hospital strongly argued against the treatment of cancer patients which resulted in the hospital prohibiting the admission of cancer patients At a meeting of the hospital s Board of Governors in 1874 Sims gave a speech rebuking the Board for refusing to treat cases of cancer even in their earliest stages In addition he criticized the restriction imposed by the Ladies Board limiting the number of spectators to fifteen on operating days Previously as many as sixty could observe any given operation but this had been changed because the Ladies Board considered it an affront to a woman s modesty to have more than fifteen male surgeons observe a woman s sexual organs under treatment Sims argued that this restriction impaired the distribution of knowledge to the many surgeons who came to New York to study gynecological diseases 74 The controversial nature of Sims speech resulted in the acceptance of his resignation by the Woman s Hospital s Board of Governors a month later He was accused of being reckless and lethal by a member of the Board of Governors who argued Sims should be fired for his insubordination It predictably also brought him into conflict with some other doctors at the Woman s Hospital with whom Sims carried on a dialogue by means of published pamphlets 75 76 77 After quarreling with the board of the Woman s Hospital over the admission of cancer patients Sims became instrumental in establishing America s first cancer institute New York Cancer Hospital 78 In reply to the treatment he received from the Woman s Hospital Sims was unanimously elected president of the American Medical Association an office he held from 1876 to 1877 17 18 16 Death EditSims suffered two angina attacks in 1877 and in 1880 contracted a severe case of typhoid fever W Gill Wylie one of Sims early twentieth century biographers said that although Sims suffered delirium he was constantly contriving instruments and conducting operations 13 After several months and a move to Charleston to aid his convalescence Sims recovered in June 1881 He traveled to France After his return to the United States in September 1881 he began to complain of an increase in heart problems In 1881 Sims was one of four physicians asked for an opinion about whether medical errors had contributed to the recent death of President Garfield 79 80 According to Wylie Sims consulted with doctors for his unknown cardiac condition both in the United States and in Europe He was positive that he had a serious disease of the heart and it caused deep mental depression 13 He was halfway through writing his autobiography and planning a return visit to Europe when he died of a heart attack on November 13 1883 in New York City Manhattan He had just visited a patient with his son H Marion Sims He is buried at Green Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn New York Criticism of Sims EditSims experimental surgeries without anesthesia on enslaved women who could not consent have been described since the late twentieth century as an example of systemic racism in the medical profession This is more generally understood as part of the historical oppression of people of color and vulnerable populations in the United States 9 Patients of Sims fistula and trismus nascentium operations were also not given available anesthetics and it is generally accepted that he caused the deaths of babies on whom he operated for infantile tetanus In regards to Sims discoveries Durrenda Ojenunga wrote in 1993 His fame and fortune were a result of unethical experimentation with powerless black women Dr Sims the father of gynecology was the first doctor to perfect a successful technique for the cure of vesicovaginal fistula yet despite his accolades in his quest for fame and recognition he manipulated the social institution of slavery to perform human experimentation which by any standard is unacceptable 24 Terri Kapsalis writes in Mastering the Female Pelvis that Sims fame and wealth are as indebted to slavery and racism as they are to innovation insight and persistence and he has left behind a frightening legacy of medical attitudes toward and treatments of women particularly women of color 81 Drawing on Sims published autobiography case histories and correspondence historian Stephen C Kenny highlights how Sims surgical treatment of enslaved infants suffering from neonatal tetanus was a typical but tragically distinctive feature in the career of an ambitious medical professional in the slaveowning South Individual doctors like Sims and the profession were incentivized in multiple ways through the system of chattel slavery Many physicians not only employed enslaved people in their practice but also traded in enslaved people while at the same time their medical research was advanced directly and significantly through the exploitation of the enslaved population 35 In a related article exploring the types frequency and functions of slave hospitals in the American South Kenny identifies Sims private negro infirmary located behind his office on South Perry Street in Montgomery as an example of a hospital for experimentation where Sims also undertook a series of gruelling and dangerous invasive surgeries on enslaved men Sims used the surgical opportunities presented by long neglected chronic and often incurable cases of illness and injuries among the enslaved to sharpen his skills and stake a claim for professional celebrity all in the context of the profits to be made from human trafficking one of the South s busiest slave markets 82 Others such as Harriet A Washington and Rebekah Barber have emphasized how e ach naked unanesthetized slave woman had to be forcibly restrained by other physicians through her shrieks of agony as Sims determinedly sliced then sutured her genitalia and argued that slaves were forced to hold each other down during these surgeries 83 84 Defense of Sims EditIn his autobiography Sims said he was indebted to the enslaved black women on whom he experimented 58 Physician and anthropologist L Lewis Wall writing in the Journal of Medical Ethics has argued that fistula surgery on non anesthetized patients would require cooperation from the patient and would not be possible if the patient had actively resisted He suggests that surviving documentation indicates that the women were trained to assist in their own surgical procedures and that the women consented to the surgeries having been motivated by the serious medical and social nature of vesicovaginal and rectovaginal fistulas 11 Wall further observes that legally consent was granted by the slaves owners enslaved black women he acknowledges were a vulnerable population with respect to medical experimentation However Wall also suggests that Sims obtained consent from the women themselves citing an 1855 passage from the New York Medical Gazette and Journal of Health where Sims wrote For this purpose therapeutic surgical experimentation I was fortunate in having three young healthy colored girls given to me by their owners in Alabama I agreeing to perform no operation without the full consent of the patients and never to perform any that would in my judgment jeopard life or produce greater mischief on the injured organs the owners agreeing to let me keep them at my own expense till I was thoroughly convinced whether the affection could be cured or not 11 During the twenty first century controversy over the various statues of Sims Deirdre Cooper Owens argued that Sims has been painted as either a monstrous butcher or a benign figure who despite his slaveowning status wanted to cure all women from their distinctly gendered suffering 85 She suggests that these opposing views are overly reductionist and that Sims history is more nuanced Indeed Sims lived in a slave holding society and expressed the racism and sexism that were considered normal during his time According to the Australian gynecologist and author Caroline M de Costa Hideous as the accounts of his surgery may appear to sensitive 20th century eyes undoubtedly Sims was at least partly motivated by a desire to improve the lot of his enslaved patients In this he was no different from many 19th century surgeons experimenting with the techniques that are the foundation of current surgical practice gynaecological and otherwise The lives of the slave women on whom Sims experimented would have been even more miserable without their subsequent cures and the knowledge gained has been applied to fistula repair for thousands of women since 67 Legacy and honors Edit nbsp J Marion Sims statue South Carolina Capitol grounds Columbia South Carolina On the title page of the reprint of an article History of the Discovery of Anesthesia first published in the May 1877 number of the Virginia Medical Monthly Sims listed his honors as Author of Silver Sutures in Surgery The Sims Operation for Vesico Vaginal Fistula Uterine Diseases History of the Discovery of Anaesthesia Etc Etc Member of the Historical Society of New York Surgeon to the Empress Eugenie Delegate to Annual Conference of the Association for the Reform and Codification of the Law of Nations 1879 Founder of the Woman s Hospital of the State of New York and formerly Surgeon to the Same Centennial President of the American Medical Association Philadelphia 1876 President of the International Medical Congress at Berne 1877 Fellow of the American Medical Association Permanent Member of the New York State Medical Society Fellow of the Academy of Sciences of the Academy of Medicine of the Pathological Society of the Neurological Society of the County Medical Society and of the Obstetrical Society of New York Fellow of the American Gynaecological Association Honorary Fellow of the State Medical Societies of Connecticut Virginia South Carolina Alabama and Texas Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Brussels Honorary Fellow of the Obstetrical Societies of London Dublin and Berlin and of the Medical Society of Christiana Oslo Knight of the Legion of Honor France Commander of Orders of Belgium Germany Austria Russia Spain Portugal and Italy Etc Etc Etc 64 A bronze statue by Ferdinand Freiherr von Miller the younger depicting Sims in surgical wear 86 was erected in Bryant Park in midtown Manhattan New York in 1894 then taken down in the 1920s amid subway construction and in 1934 was moved to the northeastern corner of Central Park at 103rd Street opposite the New York Academy of Medicine 58 87 The address delivered at its rededication was published in the Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine 88 This was the first statue erected in the United States in honor of any physician The statue became the center of protests in 2017 due to Sims operations on enslaved black women 89 It was defaced with the word RACIST and had the eyes painted red 90 In April 2018 the New York City Public Design Commission voted unanimously to have the statue removed from Central Park and installed in Green Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn near where Sims is buried 87 As of 2022 it had not yet been installed there Nature magazine published an editorial criticizing the removal then retracted it after reader protests 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 In November 2017 author J C Hallman s article about Sims Central Park statue Monumental Error 100 appeared on the cover of Harper s Magazine The article played a role in the broader discussion about Confederate monuments and in a later op ed for the Montgomery Advertiser Hallman revealed Sims career as a spy during the Civil War and the fraudulent history of another Sims monument in Montgomery Alabama 101 Another memorial was installed on the grounds of his alma mater Jefferson Medical College now Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia citation needed There is a statue on the grounds of the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery 9 dedicated in 1939 72 In April 2018 when Silent Sam a Confederate statue on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was doused with red ink and blood Sims statue had ketchup thrown on it while a skit about him was performed 102 An alternative statue of Sims s first cure the young woman known as Anarcha was erected in protest only to be stolen in the night 72 This statue of Sims was originally intended to be one of Alabama s two statues in the National Statuary Hall Collection at the U S capitol 103 Another statue of Sims installed in 1929 is at the South Carolina State House in Columbia 104 in 2017 the mayor of Columbia Stephen K Benjamin called for its removal as have other protestors 105 106 A painting by Marshall Bouldin III entitled Medical Giants of Alabama that depicted Sims and other white men standing over a partially clothed black patient was commissioned for 20 000 in 1982 paid for by donors It was on display at the University of Alabama at Birmingham s Center for Advanced Medical Studies but was removed in late 2005 or early 2006 because of complaints from people offended by it as well as the ethical questions associated with Sims 107 108 The Medical University of South Carolina whose predecessor Sims attended set up around 1980 an endowed chair in his honor 109 In February 2018 the chair was renamed 110 However a J Marion Sims Chair in obstetrics and gynecology still appears in a March 2018 program 111 A J Marion Sims Society a student organization existed there from 1923 to 1945 112 A Sims Memorial Address on Gynecology delivered before the South Carolina Medical Society at Charleston is documented from 1927 113 In 1950 a historical marker was erected near the site of his parents farmhouse in Lancaster County South Carolina where he was born Present at the dedication ceremony were Congressman James P Richards and representatives of the American Medical Association the Medical College of South Carolina the University of South Carolina the chairman of Lancaster s Marion Sims Memorial Hospital board the state archivist of South Carolina and four of Sims children Dr Roderick McDonald president of the South Carolina Medical Association introduced the speaker Dr Seale Harris past president of the Southern Medical Association and former editor of the Southern Medical Journal whose biography of Sims Woman s Surgeon the Life Story of J Marion Sims had just been published 114 9 The medical college at the University of South Carolina is named Sims College in his honor in June 2020 the university passed a resolution asking for the state to rename the college pursuant to the South Carolina Heritage Act 115 A cartoon of Sims appeared on the cover of the November 2017 issue of The Nation citation needed A J Marion Sims Foundation was founded in 1995 in his home town of Lancaster South Carolina It has dispensed almost 50 000 000 in grants 116 The Marion Sims Memorial Hospital is located in Lancaster In Montgomery Alabama a historical marker at 37 South Perry St marks the location of Sims house and backyard hospital or infirmary The building on the site is from the early twentieth century 117 In 1953 Sims was elected to the Alabama Hall of Fame 23 On April 3 2018 Behind the Sheet written by Charly Evon Simpson was presented in New York at the Ensemble Studio Theatre Its tagline read Philomena is a slave woman forced to assist her owner as he searches for a cure for fistulas Everything changes when she becomes his patient 118 119 120 Contributions EditVaginal surgery fistula repair Invented silver wire as a suture Instrumentation Sims speculum Sims sigmoid catheter There is a petition campaign to have Sims name removed from the devices he invented Sims uterine curette uterine sound vaginal retractor uterine scissors and rectal speculum New names would be chosen by a committee of POC People of Color 121 Exam and surgical positioning Sims position Fertility treatment Insemination and postcoital test Cancer care Sims argued for the admission of cancer patients to the Woman s Hospital despite contemporary beliefs that the disease was contagious Abdominal surgery Sims advocated a laparotomy to stop bleeding from bullet wounds to this area repair the damage and drain the wound His opinion was sought when President James Garfield was shot in an assassination attempt Sims responded from Paris by telegram Sims recommendations later gained acceptance 58 Gallbladder surgery In 1878 Sims drained a distended gallbladder and removed its stones He published the case believing it was the first of its kind however a similar case had already been reported in Indianapolis in 1867 58 See also EditUnethical human experimentation in the United States List of monument and memorial controversies in the United States J Marion Sims 2017 Anarcha Westcott Mothers of Gynecology MovementArchival material EditPapers of Dr Sims about 150 items are held by the Wilson Library University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill The collection has been microfilmed and some is available online A small number of letters are in the libraries of the Medical University of South Carolina and Duke University 122 References Edit Sims 1889 p 32 Sims 1889 p 23 Kelly Howard A Burrage Walter L eds Sims James Marion American Medical Biographies Baltimore The Norman Remington Company The New Cancer Hospital Laying the corner stone yesterday An address by John E Parsons Its patrons and its purposes New York Tribune May 18 1884 p 2 Archived from the original on May 4 2022 Retrieved May 4 2022 via newspapers com a b Alexander J Wesley June 2009 History of the medical use of silver Surgical Infections 10 3 289 292 doi 10 1089 sur 2008 9941 PMID 19566416 Archived from the original on July 1 2022 Retrieved June 5 2022 via Gale Academic Onefile Grant Dorothy February 3 2006 Modern gynecology s cruel founder Medical Post Vol 42 no 4 Chicago Illinois p 34 ProQuest 228920698 Archived from the original on June 2 2022 Retrieved May 16 2022 a b c d e f Lerner Barron October 28 2003 Scholars Argue Over Legacy of Surgeon Who Was Lionized Then Vilified The New York Times Archived from the original on February 22 2015 Retrieved February 17 2021 Here I am again in my beloved Dublin A Dr J Marion Sims Dossier University of Illinois 2000 Archived from the original on October 13 2018 Retrieved March 14 2017 a b c d e f g Spettel Sarah White Mark Donald June 2011 The Portrayal of J Marion Sims Controversial Surgical Legacy PDF The Journal of Urology 185 6 2424 2427 doi 10 1016 j juro 2011 01 077 PMID 21511295 Archived from the original PDF on November 4 2013 Retrieved November 4 2013 Lynch Sarah June 19 2020 Fact check Father of modern gynecology performed experiments on enslaved Black women USA Today ProQuest 2414783047 archived from the original on May 29 2022 retrieved May 16 2022 via ProQuest Central a b c d e f g h i Wall L L June 2006 The medical ethics of Dr J Marion Sims a fresh look at the historical record Journal of Medical Ethics 32 6 346 350 doi 10 1136 jme 2005 012559 ISSN 0306 6800 PMC 2563360 PMID 16731734 a b c d Sims J Marion 1885 Marion Sims H ed The Story of My Life New York D Appleton amp Company a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v Wylie W Gill 1884 Memorial Sketch of the Life of J Marion Sims New York D Appleton and Company Reprinted from The New York Medical Journal for April 12 and 19 1884 Read before the Medical Society of the County of New York January 28 1884 Ward George Gray March 1936 Marion Sims and the Origin of Modern Gynecology Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine 12 3 93 104 PMC 1965916 PMID 19311983 J Marion Sims M D Surgeon to the Woman s Hospital Frank Leslie s Weekly February 23 1856 Archived from the original on July 1 2022 Retrieved July 1 2022 via accessible archives com a b c d e f g h i Brinker Wendy 2000 J Marion Sims One Among Many Monumental Mistakes A Dr J Marion Sims Dossier University of Illinois Archived from the original on October 13 2018 Retrieved March 14 2017 a b c d e f Baldwin W O 1884 Tribute to the late James Marion Sims Montgomery Alabama Montgomery Ala Archived from the original on July 11 2021 Retrieved October 28 2018 Gergel Belinda F September 14 2016 Barhamville Academy South Carolina Encyclopedia Univ of S C Retrieved October 20 2022 Doss Harriet E Amos 2017 Enslaved Women Surgical Patients of J Marion Sims in Antebellum Alabama Sisterhood of Shared Suffering In Ashmore Susan Youngblood Dorr Lisa Lindquist eds Alabama Women Their Lives and Times University of Georgia Press pp 75 89 ISBN 9780820350776 Chalakoski Martin May 9 2018 J Marion Sims the controversial father of modern gynecology conducted experiments on enslaved women and did not use anesthesia The Vintage News Archived from the original on October 17 2018 Retrieved June 25 2020 Reception of J Marion Sims The Courtesies Extended to Him in Montgomery Montgomery Advertiser Montgomery Alabama March 21 1877 p 2 Archived from the original on July 1 2022 Retrieved June 29 2022 a b c d e f g Kapsalis Terri 1997 Public Privates Performing Gynecology from Both Ends of the Speculum Duke University Press p 46 ISBN 978 0822319214 Archived from the original on December 17 2019 Retrieved September 1 2017 via Google Books a b James Marion Sims Alabama Department of Archives and History 1995 Archived from the original on January 28 1999 Retrieved January 28 2020 a b c d e f g Ojunga Durrenda March 1993 The medical ethics of the Father of Gynaecology Dr J Marion Sims Journal of Medical Ethics 19 1 28 31 doi 10 1136 jme 19 1 28 PMC 1376165 PMID 8459435 Medical Journals Sumter County Whig Livingston Alabama March 22 1854 p 2 Archived from the original on June 18 2022 Retrieved June 19 2022 via newspapers com a b c Axelsen Diana E 1993 Women as Victims of Medical Experimentation J Marion Sims Surgery on Slave Women 1845 1850 In Cott Nancy F ed History of Women in the United States Historical Articles on Women s Lives and Activities Vol 11 Women s Bodies Health and Childbirth Berlin K G Saur pp 93 100 doi 10 1515 9783110976328 93 ISBN 3110976323 The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography Being the History of the United States as Illustrated in the Lives of the Founders Builders and Defenders of the Republic and of the Men and Women who are Doing the Work and Moulding the Thought of the Present Time J T White 1916 Archived from the original on July 11 2021 Retrieved January 7 2021 Wall L Lewis February 2020 Dr George Hayward 1791 1863 A Forgotten Pioneer of Reconstructive Pelvic Surgery PDF International Urogynecology Journal 16 5 330 333 doi 10 1007 s00192 005 1333 2 ISSN 1433 3023 PMID 15976986 S2CID 6820557 Retrieved May 26 2023 Wall L Lewis February 2020 Henry van Roonhuyse and the first repair of a vesico vaginal fistula 1676 International Urogynecology Journal 31 2 237 241 doi 10 1007 s00192 019 04158 7 ISSN 1433 3023 PMID 31807799 S2CID 208649162 Archived from the original on February 18 2021 Retrieved January 7 2021 McGinnis Lamar S Jr January 1 2017 J Marion Sims Paving the way Bulletin of the American College of Surgeons 102 1 64 5 PMID 28925614 Archived from the original on October 17 2018 Retrieved June 25 2020 a href Template Cite journal html title Template Cite journal cite journal a CS1 maint multiple names authors list link Sims J Marion February 1854 A Case of Vesico Vaginal Fistula with the Os Uteri closed up in the bladder Cured American Medical Monthly 1 2 109 112 a b c d e Bozeman Nathan 1884 History of the Clamp Suture of the late Dr J Marion Sims and why it was abandoned by the profession Gynecological Transactions 9 a b Kapsalis Terri 2002 Mastering the Female Pelvis Race and the Tools of Reproduction In Wallace Sanders Kimberly ed Skin Deep Spirit Strong The Black Female Body in American Culture PDF Ann Arbor MI University of Michigan Press pp 263 300 ISBN 978 0472067077 Archived PDF from the original on November 3 2019 Retrieved December 1 2017 Savitt Todd L August 1982 The Use of Blacks for Medical Experimentation and Demonstration in the Old South The Journal of Southern History 48 3 331 348 doi 10 2307 2207450 JSTOR 2207450 PMID 11645888 Archived from the original on May 26 2022 Retrieved May 4 2022 a b c d Kenny Stephen C August 2007 I can do the child no good Dr Sims and the Enslaved Infants of Montgomery Alabama Social History of Medicine 20 2 223 241 doi 10 1093 shm hkm036 ISSN 1477 4666 PMID 18605326 Archived from the original on November 3 2019 Retrieved August 2 2020 a b c Curry Richard O Cowden Joanna Dunlop 1972 Slavery in America Theodore Weld sAmerican Slavery As It Is Itasca Illinois F E Peacock OCLC 699102217 Snorton C Riley October 25 2017 Black on Both Sides University of Minnesota Press p 30 doi 10 5749 minnesota 9781517901721 001 0001 ISBN 9781517901721 S2CID 148881168 Monument to Mothers of Gynecology unveiled in Montgomery al September 27 2021 Archived from the original on September 28 2021 Retrieved September 28 2021 Sims J Marion 1854 Two Cases of Vesico Vaginal Fistula Cured New York Medical Gazette and Journal of Health 5 1 1 7 Sims J Marion May 1877 The Discovery of Anesthesia Virginia Medical Journal pp 17 18 Simpson James Young 1847 Remarks on the superinduction of anaesthesia in natural and morbid parturition with cases illustrative of the effects of chloroform in midwifery and answers to alleged religious objections against the practice Edinburgh Simpson James Young 1847 Answer to the religious objections advanced against the employment of anaesthetic agents in midwifery and surgery Edinburgh Archived from the original on May 10 2022 Retrieved May 10 2022 Simpson James Young April 1848 Anaesthesia in surgery does it increase or decrease the mortality attendant upon surgical operations Monthly Journal of Medical Science Archived from the original on May 10 2022 Retrieved May 10 2022 Gunning Dr July 1848 On the physiological action of chloroform Monthly Journal of Medical Science 9 47 49 Archived from the original on May 10 2022 Retrieved May 10 2022 Simpson James Young October 1848 Report on the early history and progress of anaesthetic midwifery Monthly Journal of Medical Science 209 252 Chloroform in midwifery American Medical Monthly 1 1 55 63 January 1854 a b Vedantam Shankar Gamble Vanessa Northington February 16 2016 Remembering Anarcha Lucy and Betsey The Mothers of Modern Gynecology NPR Archived from the original on May 25 2019 Retrieved March 7 2017 Simpson James Young 1847 Account of a new anaesthetic agent chloroform as a substitute for sulphuric ether in sugery and midwifery Edinburgh Wells Horace 1847 A history of the discovery of the application of nitrous oxide gas ether and other vapors to surgical operations Hartford Connecticut The author Archived from the original on July 1 2022 Retrieved May 9 2022 Sims J Marion April 11 1868 On the Nitrous Oxide Gas as an Anaesthetic British Medical Journal 1 380 349 350 doi 10 1136 bmj 1 380 349 PMC 2309972 PMID 20745090 Sims J Marion August 22 1874 On Nelaton s Method of Resuscitation from Chloroform Narcosis British Medical Journal 2 712 239 241 doi 10 1136 bmj 2 712 239 PMC 2294890 PMID 20747603 Sims J Marion May 1877 The Discovery of Anaesthesia Virginia Medical Monthly Rosenbloom Julia M Schonberger Robert B 2015 The outlook of physician histories J Marion Sims and The Discovery of Anaesthesia Medical Humanities 41 2 102 106 doi 10 1136 medhum 2015 010680 PMID 26048369 S2CID 25086321 Sims J Marion 1880 The bromide of ethyl as an anaesthetic New York Academy of Medicine Archived from the original on October 17 2018 Retrieved October 17 2018 Wall L Lewis July 2007 Did J Marion Sims deliberately addict his first fistula patients to opium Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 62 3 336 356 doi 10 1093 jhmas jrl045 PMID 17082217 Urell Aaryn August 29 2019 Medical Exploitation of Black Women Equal Justice Initiative Retrieved September 26 2023 Sims J Marion January 1852 On the treatment of vesico vaginal fistula The American Journal of the Medical Sciences Archived from the original on July 1 2022 Retrieved June 27 2022 a b c d e f g Shingleton H M March April 2009 The Lesser Known Dr Sims ACOG Clinical Review 14 2 13 16 Ojanuga Durrenda March 1 1993 The medical ethics of the father of gynaecology Dr J Marion Sims PDF Journal of Medical Ethics 19 1 28 31 at pp 29 30 doi 10 1136 jme 19 1 28 PMC 1376165 PMID 8459435 Archived PDF from the original on April 19 2022 Retrieved May 4 2022 Hartigan J F 1884 The Lock Jaw of Infants Bermingham amp Co p 17 Roper Martha September 12 2007 Maternal and Neonatal Tetanus PDF Lancet World Health Organization 370 9603 1947 59 doi 10 1016 S0140 6736 07 61261 6 PMID 17854885 S2CID 14064720 Archived PDF from the original on November 3 2019 Retrieved October 5 2020 Washington Harriet A 2008 Medical Apartheid The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present Knopf Doubleday pp 62 63 ISBN 9780767929394 Archived from the original on March 30 2019 Retrieved September 4 2020 Perper Joshua A Cina Stephen J 2010 When Doctors Kill Who Why and How Springer Science amp Business Media p 88 ISBN 9781441913692 Archived from the original on April 25 2017 Retrieved June 5 2016 a b Sims J Marion May 1877 History of the discovery of anaesthesia Virginia Medical Monthly 1 Hooper Johnson J July 12 1860 Dr J Marion Sims Charleston Daily Courier Charleston South Carolina p 2 Archived from the original on June 12 2022 Retrieved June 12 2022 via newspapers com a b Marr James Pratt 1957 Pioneer surgeons of the Woman s Hospital the lives of Sims Emmet Peaslee and Thomas Philadelphia F A Davis Company Archived from the original on July 1 2022 Retrieved July 1 2022 a b c de Costa Caroline M June 2003 James Marion Sims some speculations and a new position PDF The Medical Journal of Australia 178 12 660 663 doi 10 5694 j 1326 5377 2003 tb05401 x PMID 12797862 S2CID 77028975 Archived PDF from the original on October 29 2018 Retrieved October 29 2018 St Luke s Roosevelt Hospital Center Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology 2007 History of the Department Archived from the original on July 25 2010 Retrieved March 18 2010 a b c Sims James Marion Appletons Cyclopaedia of American Biography Vol V 1900 pp 540 541 see page 541 American Medical Association Evening Star Washington D C May 6 1858 p 3 Archived from the original on May 7 2022 Retrieved May 7 2022 Buxton C Lee M D October 1963 After Office Hours J Marion Sims European Experiences Obstetrics amp Gynecology 22 4 543 548 at p 543 a b c d e f g h Hallman J C September 28 2018 J Marion Sims and the Civil War A Rollicking Tale of Deceit and Spycraft Montgomery Advertiser Archived from the original on November 4 2019 Retrieved June 25 2020 Sims J Marion 1877 Introduction In Marion Sims H ed The Story of My Life D Appleton amp Company Archived from the original on July 11 2021 Retrieved October 25 2018 Martin Hayes Ehrlich Harry Butler Francelia March 1950 J Marion Sims Pioneer cancer protagonist Cancer 3 2 189 204 doi 10 1002 1097 0142 1950 3 2 lt 189 AID CNCR2820030202 gt 3 0 CO 2 1 Peaslee E R Emmet Thomas Addis Thomas T Gaillard 1877 To the medical profession statements respecting the separation of Dr J Marion Sims from the Woman s Hospital New York New York Archived from the original on October 29 2018 Retrieved October 29 2018 a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint location missing publisher link Sims J Marion 1877 The Woman s Hospital in 1874 A Reply to the Printed Circular of Drs E R Peaslee T A Emmet and T Gailliard Thomas New York a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint location missing publisher link Peaslee E R Emmet T A Thomas T G 1877 Reply to Dr J Marion Sims Pamphlet entitled The Woman s Hospital in 1874 New York a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint location missing publisher link J Marion Sims Innovative Healthcare MUSC s Legacy of Progress Waring Historical Library Archived from the original on January 22 2017 Retrieved March 15 2017 Hammond William A Ashhurst Jr John Sims J Marion Hodgen John T December 1881 The Surgical Treatment of President Garfield The North American Review 133 301 578 610 JSTOR 25101018 Archived from the original on May 6 2022 Retrieved May 6 2022 Garfield s Fatal Wound Four Eminent Surgeons Discuss the Case The New York Times November 16 1881 p 2 Archived from the original on May 19 2022 Retrieved May 19 2022 Kapsalis Terri March 24 2019 Mastering the Female Pelvis Ann Arbor p 263 ISBN 9780472067077 Archived from the original on June 28 2020 Retrieved December 1 2017 Kenny Stephen C January 2010 A Dictate of Both Interest and Mercy Slave Hospitals in the Antebellum South Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 65 1 1 47 doi 10 1093 jhmas jrp019 ISSN 0022 5045 JSTOR 24631845 PMID 19549698 S2CID 22183013 Archived from the original on May 6 2022 Retrieved May 6 2022 Trouillot Terence August 23 2017 Pressure Builds to Take Down a Particularly Gruesome NYC Monument to Doctor Who Experimented on Female Slaves ArtNet Archived from the original on August 26 2017 Retrieved August 28 2017 Barber Rebekah August 25 2017 Monuments to the father of gynecology honor brutality against Black women Facing South Archived from the original on November 13 2017 Retrieved August 28 2017 Owens Deidre Cooper August 2 2017 More Than a Statue Rethinking J Marion Sims Legacy Rewire News Archived from the original on October 29 2018 Retrieved August 28 2017 The bronze standing figure is signed F v on Miller fec Munchen 1892 Text of historical sign Archived April 6 2005 at the Wayback Machine a b Neuman William April 16 2018 City Orders Sims Statue Removed from Central Park The New York Times Archived from the original on April 17 2018 Retrieved June 25 2020 Ward George Gray December 1934 Marion Sims and the origin of modern gynecology Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine Second 10 12 721 724 PMC 1965916 PMID 19311983 Perez Miriam Zoila August 30 2017 New Target for Statue Removal Father of Gynecology Who Operated on Enslaved Black Women J Marion Sims a White doctor who performed countless operations without anesthesia has become a new target for statue removal in New York City Race Forward Archived from the original on August 31 2017 Retrieved August 31 2017 Krause Kenneth 2018 Science Indeed the World Needs Fewer Not More Icons Skeptical Inquirer Committee for Skeptical Inquiry 42 1 23 25 Science must acknowledge its past mistakes and crimes Nature 549 7670 5 6 September 7 2017 Bibcode 2017Natur 549R 5 doi 10 1038 549005b PMID 28880309 S2CID 4462464 Readers respond to Nature s Editorial on historical monuments Nature September 8 2017 doi 10 1038 nature 2017 22584 Archived from the original on May 7 2022 Retrieved May 7 2022 Green Monica H September 14 2017 Statues a mother of gynaecology Nature 549 7671 160 Bibcode 2017Natur 549Q 160G doi 10 1038 549160a PMID 28905907 S2CID 52806434 Gould Katherine E September 14 2017 Statues for those deserving respect Nature 549 7671 160 Bibcode 2017Natur 549R 160G doi 10 1038 549160c PMID 28905915 S2CID 52800201 Cobb Kim M September 14 2017 Statues learn from mistakes Nature 549 7671 160 Bibcode 2017Natur 549 160C doi 10 1038 549160b PMID 28905900 S2CID 47033919 Baldwin Melinda September 18 2017 Statues sculpting a tarnished legacy Nature 549 7672 334 Bibcode 2017Natur 549 334B doi 10 1038 549334a PMID 28922665 S2CID 205095293 Campbell Philip September 18 2017 Statues an editorial response Nature 549 7672 334 Bibcode 2017Natur 549 334C doi 10 1038 549334c PMID 28922663 S2CID 47247939 Archived from the original on May 7 2022 Retrieved May 7 2022 Hammonds Evelynn M Reverby Susan M September 18 2017 Statues Researchers to mind their history Nature 549 7672 334 Bibcode 2017Natur 549 334H doi 10 1038 549334b ISSN 0028 0836 PMID 28922666 S2CID 205095299 Washington Harriet A September 21 2017 Statues that perpetuate lies should not stand Nature 549 7672 309 Bibcode 2017Natur 549 309W doi 10 1038 549309a PMID 28933446 S2CID 4460808 Meeting Anarcha Mend The University Press of Kentucky pp 62 63 2018 doi 10 2307 j ctv5npjt6 38 ISBN 978 0 8131 7628 4 Hallman J C J Marion Sims and the Civil War a rollicking tale of deceit and spycraft The Montgomery Advertiser Archived from the original on November 4 2019 Retrieved September 1 2020 Charges dropped against man accused of throwing ketchup on Confederate statue at Capitol Montgomery Advertiser Associated Press October 9 2018 Archived from the original on November 3 2019 Retrieved October 10 2018 Hallman J C February 3 2022 Memorializing a Medical Predator J Marion Sims all too slow fall from scientific renown speaks volumes about the institutions that shore up white male impunity The Forum Archived from the original on May 11 2022 Retrieved June 29 2022 James Marion Sims memorial unveiled May 10 1929 Columbia South Carolina Columbia South Carolina 1929 archived from the original on October 28 2018 retrieved October 27 2018 a href Template Citation html title Template Citation citation a CS1 maint location missing publisher link Roldan Cynthia August 16 2017 Steve Benjamin says monument at SC State House should come down at some point The State Archived from the original on January 23 2018 Retrieved February 12 2018 Marchant Bristow August 25 2017 Protesters want Confederate monuments removed from SC State House The State Archived from the original on July 4 2021 Retrieved April 15 2018 Brown Deneen L August 30 2017 A surgeon from SC experimented on slave women without anesthesia Now his statues are under attack The State Archived from the original on April 19 2018 Retrieved April 17 2018 A 19th Century Doctor amp sic The Washington Post January 29 2006 Archived from the original on November 14 2020 Retrieved April 17 2018 1 Million Sought To Improve Women s Health Decatur Daily Decatur Alabama February 23 1977 p A3 Archived from the original on May 7 2022 Retrieved May 7 2022 via newspaperarchive com Zhang Sarah April 18 2018 The Surgeon Who Experimented on Slaves The Atlantic Archived from the original on October 18 2018 Retrieved June 25 2020 Medical University of South Carolina March 24 26 2018 49th Annual Updates and Challenges in Obstetrics amp Gynecology Spring Symposium Archived from the original on October 19 2018 Retrieved October 15 2018 Medical University of South Carolina 2007 J Marion Sims Medical Society Records PDF archived PDF from the original on October 28 2018 retrieved October 25 2018 Finding aid The Sims memorial address on gynecology delivered before the South Carolina Medical Society at Charleston November 22 1927 OCLC 18214591 Pettus Louise 2000 Dr J Marion Sims South Carolina GenWeb project Archived from the original on July 8 2001 Retrieved October 25 2018 Appendix 11 Research Reports on Building Names Sims College Presidential Commission on University History University of South Carolina July 16 2021 Archived from the original on October 25 2021 Retrieved October 3 2021 J Marion Sims Foundation History Archived from the original on October 19 2018 Retrieved October 17 2018 Hattabaugh Lee 2010 Office of Dr Luther Leonidas Hill Office Site of Dr J Marion Sims Historical Markers Database Archived from the original on October 26 2018 Retrieved October 25 2018 Behind the Sheet Written by Charly Evon Simpson Ensemble Repertory Theatre April 3 2018 Archived from the original on June 27 2022 Retrieved June 15 2022 Brantley Ben January 17 2019 Review Reckoning With Medical Betrayals Behind the Sheet The New York Times Archived from the original on March 21 2022 Retrieved June 27 2022 Soloski Alexis February 25 2022 Driven by the Potential for Joy Comedies Are the Thing This Spring The New York Times Archived from the original on June 27 2022 Retrieved June 27 2022 Sonstelie Alison 2020 Rename Medical Devices Named After Dr Marion Sims change org Sims J Marion 1880 1881 1858 1859 J Marion Sims Letters South Carolina Digital Library archived from the original on July 31 2016 retrieved July 28 2016Examinations of the ethical questions regarding Sims EditCritical of Sims Axelsen Diana E Fall 1985 Women as Victims of Medical Experimentation J Marion Sims Surgery on Slave Women 1845 1850 SAGE 2 2 10 13 PMID 11645827 Axelsen Diana E 1993 Women as Victims of Medical Experimentation J Marion Sims Surgery on Slave Women 1845 1850 In Cott Nancy F ed History of Women in the United States Historical Articles on Women s Lives and Activities Vol 11 Women s Bodies Health and Childbirth Berlin K G Saur pp 93 100 doi 10 1515 9783110976328 93 ISBN 3110976323 McGregor Deborah Kuhn 1990 Sexual surgery and the origins of gynecology J Marion Sims his hospital and his patients New York Garland ISBN 978 0824037680 Ojanuga Durrenda March 1 1993 The medical ethics of the father of gynaecology Dr J Marion Sims PDF Journal of Medical Ethics 19 1 28 31 doi 10 1136 jme 19 1 28 PMC 1376165 PMID 8459435 Sartin Jeffrey S May 2004 J Marion Sims the Father of Gynecology Hero or Villain Southern Medical Journal 97 5 500 505 doi 10 1097 00007611 200405000 00017 PMID 15180027 S2CID 6500614 via Gale Academic Onefile Comments on the article of O Leary just cited Gonzalez David March 2 2014 Sculpture of Paradox Doctor as Hero and Villain The New York Times Holland Brynn August 29 2017 The Father of Modern Gynecology Performed Shocking Experiments on Enslaved Women His use of Black bodies as medical test subjects falls into a history that includes the Tuskegee syphilis experiment and Henrietta Lacks history com Washington Harriet A September 21 2017 Statues that perpetuate lies should not stand Nature 549 7672 309 Bibcode 2017Natur 549 309W doi 10 1038 549309a PMID 28933446 S2CID 4460808 Hallman J C November 2017 Monumental Error Will New York City finally tear down a statue Harper s November 2017 Savel Richard H Munro Cindy L January 2018 History Is a Tangled Mess Medical Progress But at What Cost American Journal of Critical Care 27 1 6 8 doi 10 4037 ajcc2018994 PMID 29292269 Downes Heidi October 2 2019 The forgotten women of gynaecology British Journal of Midwifery 27 10 614 615 doi 10 12968 bjom 2019 27 10 614 S2CID 210649375 L L Wall responded in the same journal in 2021 cited below Cronin Monica November 2020 Anarcha Betsey Lucy and the women whose names were not recorded The legacy of J Marion Sims Anaesthesia and Intensive Care 48 3 suppl 6 13 doi 10 1177 0310057X20966606 PMID 33249851 S2CID 227236696 Defenses of Sims Moir Chassar December 7 1940 J Marion Sims and the Vesico Vaginal Fistula Then and Now British Medical Journal 2 4170 773 778 doi 10 1136 bmj 2 4170 773 PMC 2179954 PMID 20783426 Word S Buford 1972 The Father of Gynecology American Association for the History of Medicine 9 33 39 Kaiser I H December 15 1978 Reappraisals of J Marion Sims American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 132 8 878 884 doi 10 1016 0002 9378 78 90715 9 PMID 367162 Lerner Barron J October 28 2003 Scholars Argue over Legacy of Surgeon Who Was Lionized then Vilified The New York Times de Costa Caroline M June 2003 James Marion Sims some speculations and a new position PDF The Medical Journal of Australia 178 12 660 663 doi 10 5694 j 1326 5377 2003 tb05401 x PMID 12797862 S2CID 77028975 O Leary J Patrick May 2004 J Marion Sims a defense of the father of gynecology Southern Medical Journal 97 5 427 429 doi 10 1097 00007611 200405000 00001 PMID 15180013 via Gale Academic Onefile Wall L Lewis July 2007 Did J Marion Sims deliberately addict his first fistula patients to opium Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 62 3 336 356 doi 10 1093 jhmas jrl045 PMID 17082217 Wall L L June 2006 The medical ethics of Dr J Marion Sims a fresh look at the historical record Journal of Medical Ethics 32 6 346 350 doi 10 1136 jme 2005 012559 ISSN 0306 6800 PMC 2563360 PMID 16731734 West M J Irvine L M February 2015 The eponymous Dr James Marion Sims MD LLD 1813 1883 Journal of Medical Biography 23 1 35 45 doi 10 1177 0967772013480604 PMID 24585590 S2CID 10121606 Petros Peter Abendstein Burghard Browning Andrew 2018 In defense of J Marion Sims International Urogynecology Journal 29 11 1563 1564 doi 10 1007 s00192 018 3708 1 PMID 29951910 S2CID 49475269 Wall L Lewis March April 2018 J Marion Sims and the Vesicovaginal Fistula Historical Understanding Medical Ethics and Modern Political Sensibilities Female Pelvic Medicine amp Reconstructive Surgery 24 2 66 75 doi 10 1097 SPV 0000000000000546 PMID 29474277 S2CID 3519992 Vernon Leonard F August 2019 J Marion Sims MD Why He and His Accomplishments Need to Continue to be Recognized a Commentary and Historical Review Journal of the National Medical Association 111 4 436 446 doi 10 1016 j jnma 2019 02 002 eISSN 1943 4693 ISSN 0027 9684 PMID 30851980 S2CID 73725863 Wall L Lewis April 2020 The controversial Dr J Marion Sims 1813 1883 International Urogynecology Journal 31 7 1299 1303 doi 10 1007 s00192 020 04301 9 ISSN 0937 3462 PMID 32328679 S2CID 216076564 Wall L Lewis March 2 2021 J Marion Sims and the forgotten women of gynaecology British Journal of Midwifery 29 3 172 174 doi 10 12968 bjom 2021 29 3 172 S2CID 233858519 Wall L Lewis March 2022 The Damnatio Memoriae of J Marion Sims Pelviperineology 41 1 63 72 doi 10 34057 PPj 2022 41 01 2022 1 3 S2CID 248029189 via Gale Academic Onefile Unclassified Christmas Monica November 2021 SayHerName Should Obstetrics and Gynecology Reckon with the Legacy of JM Sims Reproductive Sciences 28 11 3282 3284 doi 10 1007 s43032 021 00567 6 PMID 33877641 S2CID 233308868 Wailoo Keith October 16 2018 Historical Aspects of Race and Medicine The Case of J Marion Sims Journal of the American Medical Association 320 15 1529 1530 doi 10 1001 jama 2018 11944 PMID 30264160 S2CID 52880128 Sayej Nadja April 21 2018 J Marion Sims controversial statue taken down but debate still rages New York City has removed the likeness of the 19th century doctor and father of gynecology who experimented on black women from Central Park The Guardian Doss Harriet E Amos 2017 Enslaved Women Surgical Patients of J Marion Sims in Antebellum Alabama Sisterhood of Shared Suffering In Ashmore Susan Youngblood Dorr Lisa Lindquist eds Alabama Women Their Lives and Times University of Georgia Press pp 75 89 ISBN 9780820350776 Spettel S White M D June 2011 The Portrayal of J Marion Sims Controversial Surgical Legacy The Journal of Urology 185 6 2424 2427 doi 10 1016 j juro 2011 01 077 PMID 21511295 Further reading arranged by date EditSims J Marion 1866 Clinical notes on uterine surgery With Special Reference to the Management of the Sterile Condition London Robert Hardwicke Retrieved July 16 2015 Bozeman Nathan 1884 History of the clamp suture of the late Dr J Marion Sims and why it was abandoned by the profession Gynecological Transactions 9 The link is to a reprint The title at the beginning of the text is The clamp suture and the range of its applicability considered in relation to the cure of the injuries incident to parturition with statistics Sims J Marion 1889 Marion Sims H ed The Story of My Life New York D Appleton amp Company Wilson J G Fiske J eds 1900 Sims James Marion Appletons Cyclopaedia of American Biography Vol V New York D Appleton pp 540 541 Harris Seale Brown Frances Williams 1950 Woman s surgeon the life story of J Marion Sims New York a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint location missing publisher link Heaton C E 1956 The influence of J Marion Sims on gynecology Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine 32 9 685 688 PMC 1805969 PMID 13356107 Speert H 1958 Obstetrics and Gynecologic Milestones New York Macmillan pp 442 454 Savitt Todd L August 1982 The Use of Blacks for Medical Experimentation and Demonstration in the Old South Journal of Southern History 48 3 331 348 doi 10 2307 2207450 JSTOR 2207450 PMID 11645888 Richardson D A January 1994 Ethics in gynecologic surgical innovation American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 170 1 Pt 1 1 6 doi 10 1016 s0002 9378 94 70373 6 PMID 8296808 Gamble Vanessa November 1997 Under the Shadow of Tuskegee African Americans and Health Care American Journal of Public Health 87 11 1773 8 doi 10 2105 AJPH 87 11 1773 PMC 1381160 PMID 9366634 Kapsalis Terri 2002 Mastering the Female Pelvis Race and the Tools of Reproduction In Wallace Sanders Kimberly ed Skin Deep Spirit Strong The Black Female Body in American Culture Ann Arbor MI University of Michigan Press pp 263 300 ISBN 978 0472067077 Schwartz Marie Jenkins 2006 Birthing a Slave Motherhood and Medicine in the American South Spencer Thomas January 21 2006 UAB shelves divisive portrait of medical titans Gynecologist s practices at heart of debate Birmingham News Washington Harriet A 2008 Medical Apartheid The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present Anchor ISBN 978 0385509930 Kenny Stephen C January 2010 A Dictate of Both Interest and Mercy Slave Hospitals in the Antebellum South Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 65 1 1 47 doi 10 1093 jhmas jrp019 PMID 19549698 Straughn Jr J Michael Gandy Roy E Rodning Charles B July 2012 The core competencies of James Marion Sims MD Annals of Surgery 256 1 193 202 doi 10 1097 SLA 0b013e318249ce3b PMID 22514000 Owens Deirdre Cooper 2017 Medical Bondage Race Gender and the Origins of American Gynecology Kenny Stephen C June 12 2020 J Marion Sims statue Questionable monument in a questionable place Montgomery Advertiser Montgomery Alabama Sheather Julian 2020 Judging history s heroes and monsters British Medical Journal 371 m4554 doi 10 1136 bmj m4554 PMID 33303486 S2CID 228084537 Gillespie John Jr Spring 2022 Anarcha s Science of the Flesh Towards an Afropessimist Theory of Science Catalyst Feminism Theory Technoscience 8 1 doi 10 28968 cftt v8i1 35229 S2CID 248013748 a href Template Cite journal html title Template Cite journal cite journal a CS1 maint multiple names authors list link Video EditCarples Josh 2019 Remembering Anarcha Documentary Kirby I Bland Michelle Browder LaToya Clark Harriet E Amos Doss 803 Films Carolyn Jean s Son Visions Terrible Master FilmsExternal links Edit nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to J Marion Sims J Marion Sims Encyclopedia of Alabama Sims James Marion Appletons Cyclopaedia of American Biography 1900 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title J Marion Sims amp oldid 1179963436, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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