Gynecological master or devil from hell? The Dr. Sims you don’t know!

Get the nine-valent vaccine, do HPV screening, TCT examination...With the advancement of medical technology, the prevention and detection methods of women's diseases are becoming more and more advanced.

When it comes to the treatment of women's diseases, we cannot fail to mention one person.

Marion Sims, maybe many people have not heard of his name. He was a very groundbreaking doctor. For a long time, he was considered the father of gynecology. Many of the gynecological techniques he invented are still used today.

J. Marion Sims, 1813-1883

The fistula repair surgery he pioneered helped women suffering from vaginal fistulas (a disease that had previously had no cure) regain health.

In addition, the speculum, a medical device often used to examine body openings, was first invented by Sims for examining the female vagina. There is also a gynecological position in medicine called the Sims position, which is named after Sims.

Image source: Wikipedia

After reading this, do you think this doctor is particularly great? He not only saved lives with his outstanding knowledge, but also invented innovative medical equipment to benefit future generations? But if I tell you that Sims's groundbreaking medical achievements were all based on his live experiments on black female slaves, would you still maintain your original respect for him?

If you want to understand how Sims embarked on such a path of human experimentation, perhaps we can find the answer from the context of that era.

Business opportunities under the slave trade

In 1845, Sims, who had just graduated from medical school, came to the small town of Montgomery, Alabama, intending to run a private clinic.

At that time, the United States had not yet experienced the Civil War, and black slavery was prevalent in the South. Alabama's plantation economy developed rapidly by exploiting black slaves.

Image source: Screenshot from the movie "12 Years a Slave"

Although slaves were still the private property of plantation owners at that time, the country issued regulations prohibiting the international slave trade, so the number of black slaves traded in Africa was strictly controlled. Driven by profit, the plantation owners decided to let the existing black slaves marry on their own and sell their children as slaves when they grew up.

As a reproductive tool for plantation owners, female slaves at that time became very popular in the southern United States. Naturally, slave owners began to care about the physical health of these female slaves, hoping that they could give birth to more offspring for their own profit.

In such a social atmosphere, Sims was able to come into contact with a large number of female black slaves every day.

Once, when Sims was assisting a black female slave in childbirth, he inserted forceps into the birth canal without explanation, clamped the baby's head and tried to pull it out. The woman suffered from severe vaginal fistula after giving birth. Simply put, this disease means that the patient has a passage between the rectum and vagina, or between the vagina and bladder. If women with this disease want to continue to have children, they are very likely to encounter dystocia during childbirth, and in severe cases they may even lose their lives.

Driven by profit, Sims began to look for a solution to this problem, and the owner of the manor began to provide Sims with a steady stream of test subjects in order to use these women to give birth. Of course, these test subjects were female slaves who had no human rights.

Image source: Wikipedia, Sims (second from right) and the lying female slave

Cruel live experiments

The experimental process requires repeated trial and error and data verification, and each time it is a terrible ordeal for women. Sims once recorded in her diary that her operations kept failing and lasted for a full four years.

What made these slaves suffer more than being used as test subjects was that Sims conducted all these live experiments without anesthesia! In other words, they were used by Sims for experiments while they were awake.

Image source: Wikipedia

At that time, medical science had developed and anesthetics had been invented. However, the medical community at that time did not particularly support the use of anesthetics because anesthesia itself was risky. In addition, there was a social voice at that time that believed that black people were numb to pain and could hardly feel pain. With the support of these two arguments, Sims never used anesthetics on these women in his experiments.

A historical stain on success

After countless failures, Sims finally perfected his fistula repair technique in 1849 and published and promoted his technique through medical journals. With this invention, Sims gained wide recognition from doctors and eventually established his position in the medical community.

During this process, he never mentioned a word about the cruel human experiments he conducted.

After the American Civil War, Sims went to New York to open a larger gynecological hospital and devoted his life to it.

There was a statue of him where he worked. He was praised not only as a doctor but also as a philanthropist.

However, with the rise of the racial equality movement in the United States in recent years, what Sims did can no longer be covered up, and this unethical experimental method has been questioned and condemned by more and more people. It can be said that Sims' achievements were built on the exploitation of black slaves.

Image source: curbed

As a result, black people who knew the truth kept coming forward and demanded that the American medical community stop worshipping Sims. Under public opinion, Sims' statue was removed in 2018.

Image source: curbed

Everything Sims did was full of the limitations of the times. His contribution to the expansion of medical skills is unquestionable, but the means he adopted hurt many innocent women.

What do you think of Dr. Sims? Do you think he is a "gynecological expert" or a "devil from hell"?

END

Tadpole Musical Notation original article, please indicate the source when reprinting

Editor/Heart and Paper