For Lucy and Anarcha [View all]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2563360/

Dr. J Marion Sims, hailed as the Father of Gynecology. However his methods have been brought into question and rightfully so.

Before his discovery, Dr's were taught about childbirth, using dummies. It was not until they graduated and practiced on their own that they ever saw/participated in a live birth.

A Viesco Vaginal Fistula was a common ailment at that time. It is tear from the bladder to the vagina. This condition would leave women incontinent for the rest of their lives. This condition effected women more often at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder, due to lack of good nutrition and prenatal care. The lowest were slave women. This is where the controversy comes in. He experimented on these women to surgically repair VVF. While he did succeed in the repair, the cost was high. Even prior to this, Sims often used slaves and slave children to experiment on. He blamed their illnesses to poor moral character and idleness.

Slave women were not asked permission to be surgically experimented on. Their owners gave that permission. The most notable were Lucy, the first woman he operated on and Anarcha. The later of whom he operated on 30 times in 4 years before he successfully repaired VVF. All of this was done without anesthesia. To be fair, ether was not known as an anesthetic when he began. It was during this time that it became known and used throughout the medical community. Sims however did not use it on the slave women once its use became known.

The article at the link above, written by Dr. Ojanuga has much more detail on Sims use of slave women for medical experimentation. Many of his defenders use the fact that the women prior to his discovery were social outcasts prior to his breakthrough, the slave women would have given permission if they were free to do so. I say hogwash, there were plenty of free white women who would have given permission and some did. They however were not able to withstand the pain. It is of my opinion, because they were freely able to rescind consent where the slave women were not. Even later in life, when doing this operation ether was not used on the poor. That was used on only gentrified white women.

Many hail Dr Sims as the Father of gynecology, but at what cost? His persistence in solving this medical problem was not for the benefit or a concern for women, but more to make a name for himself. The slave women are forgotten pieces of history, their contributions are not even, nor ever have been a factor. Another sad point is that never in his mind did it occur to him or others of the time is that many of the medical problems slaves endured were due to lack of good nutrition and the conditions they were forced to live in.

http://usslave.blogspot.com/2011/05/dr-j-marion-sims-medical-experiments-on.html




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