James Marion Sims, or J. Marion Sims, is regarded as the "Father of Modern Gynecology".
What you may not know is that the Father of Modern Gynecology conducted his experiments on enslaved black women without the use of anesthesia, due to his belief that black women did not feel pain at all. He believed that his notion of black women not feeling pain was justification for him to not anesthetize his test subjects. Additionally, in an 1857 lecture, he stated that it was "not painful enough to justify the trouble".
Sims often made a public spectacle of cutting on these women, doing so as demonstrations to other physicians. The other physicians would be called upon to hold the women down as they writhed in pain. On one occasion, the physicians left observing the procedure as the cries of the woman being cut upon were dreadful.
He operated on one enslaved black woman over 30 times, Anarcha.
Anarcha was one of the seventy-five slaves who worked on the Wescott plantation, just on the outskirts of Montgomery, Alabama.
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Anarcha went into labor one day, and stayed in labor for 3 days. Sims was called in to help assist her with the delivery. He writes in his autobiography that he used forceps on the fetus's head, but didn't know what he was doing because he had little experience with the device. There's no clarification on whether the baby survived the ordeal. However, Anarcha suffered several vaginal tears from the birthing.
She became incontinent afterwards due to the damage. [1]
A few days later, the owner of the plantation sent Anarcha back to Sims in hopes he could repair the damage made to her.
Sims took Anarcha reluctantly and had her position herself on her hands and knees on his examination table. Using a modified pewter spoon, he expanded the walls of her vagina, releasing the pressure that held her uterus in an awkward position. Anarcha instantly felt relief as the change in air pressure helped her uterus relocate into its proper position. From then on, Anarcha became a test subject for Sims through an agreement with her maxter.
Anarcha regularly underwent surgeries, fully awake without the comfort of anesthesia. It was commonly accepted that African Americans had a higher tolerance for pain than white people. Commonly accepted, yet utterly wrong.
Sims repaired Anarcha's fistula, which seemed to occur in a good number of births by slave women. He was sent many slave women with fistulas, but according to his biography, he experimented repeatedly on Anarcha, as well as two other enslaved women, Betsy and Lucy.
It has been calculated that Anarcha was operated on at least 34 times, all without the use of anesthesia.
Anarcha, Betsy, Lucy, along with many other enslaved women helped Dr. Sims "perfect his technique" [2] and create gynecological tools. While his tools are in display at museums, Anarcha, Betsy, and Lucy are left no legacy at all, due to slaves reading and writing to be a crime punishable by death.
To this day, J. Marion Sims is honored with at least three monuments located in the United States.
[1]: 'incontinent' means to have insufficient, or no voluntary control over urination or defecation.
[2]: It is worth noting that only after he perfected his technique on enslaved women, he would use them on white women. The white women would of course have the comfort of anesthesia.
