Thread by @KalekyeMoments

THREAD: Oh what pain our ancestors went through. “The father of modern gynecology”, James Marion Sims used African women forced into slavery for his experiments and surgeries which were performed without anesthesia.
@HistoryVille @AfricaFactsZone @FemnetProg @rhnkorg

He argued that the subjects of his operations weren’t in pain enough to warrant any form of anesthesia/therapeutic treatment. His reasoning was that black people didn’t feel as much pain as whites and therefore didn’t require anesthesia during surgery. #HumanRightsViolations

This caused untold suffering to those women and many died at his hands. Sims didn’t have any specific gynecological training. Drs. in the 19th century weren’t keen on treating women. Female organs were considered derogative and disgusting at that time. #HumanRights

He only started the practice when he was asked to help a patient who’d fallen off a horse and suffered pelvic and back pain. In his autobiography, Sims talked about the advantages of working on people that were his property: #unwhitewashingofhistory #themothersofgynecology

He was talking about Anarcha, Lucy and Betsey; young, black, enslaved women who were gifted to him by their slave owners. They’d given birth & suffered irreparable post-delivery trauma which meant they couldn’t work to their full capacity.

Research found that the young women would have been breeders whose primary value lay in their ability to reproduce. The injuries they suffered were vesico-vaginal fistula, making them perfect specimens for Sims and his experiments.

His 1st fistula patient was 18 yr old Lucy who'd given birth a few months prior and couldn't control her bladder since. During the procedure, patients were completely naked and asked to perch on their knees and bend forward onto their elbows so their heads rested on their hands.

Lucy endured an hr long surgery, screaming and crying out in pain, as nearly a dozen other doctors watched. Sims later wrote that she was in extreme agony and became extremely ill due to his controversial use of a sponge to drain the urine away from the bladder,

which led her to contract blood poisoning. He thought she'd die and it took Lucy two or three months to recover entirely from the effects of the operation. Anarcha who was 17, suffered up to 30 brutal operations at the hands of Sims over a period of 4 yrs.

After which Sims perfected his experimentation of fistula surgeries. Afterwards, he began to practice on white women, using anesthesia, which was new to the medical field at the time.

Enslaved infants were not spared and were also subject to his operations. In his search for a neonatal tetanus cure, he thought the baby's skull shape could be the cause, so he used an awl ( pointed tool for piercing holes) to forcibly align the bones. The procedures were fatal.

A statue that stood in Central Park to honor his advances in surgical techniques was relocated to Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, where Sims is buried. Protestors instigated the process citing controversial work methods he used at the expense of the enslaved women.

At the cemetery, the J. Marion Sims statue was demoted to a lower pedestal and displayed with a sign explaining the its history. His descendent, Rob McCue, supported the statue being taken down. He said he did not want to celebrate him.

There’s been a clamor to change the names of tools and procedures associated with Sims practice. such as the Simms speculum used to treat and fix vaginal fistula and the Sims position which is recommended for pregnant women who find it comfortable for sleeping.

There’s clamor to reclaim the story of who really is the mother of gynecology and to acknowledge the input of these forgotten women in order to stamp their place in the history of medicine.
All photos courtesy