The Mothers of Gynecology

Par Tamara Rose

Written by Tamara Rose.

Image: Artist Michelle Browder Creates 'Mothers of Gynecology' Monument to Enslaved Women Who Endured Experiments.

The practice of gynecology as we know it today would not be what we know it to be without the sacrifices of the young Black girls we are going to discuss today. While the abuse they endured is heartbreaking and should make you angry, I want you to question why their stories aren’t told in classrooms. Ask your gynecologist if they know about these girls, then ask if they know about J Marion Sims, the father of gynecology and the man who tortured these girls and many more. While Sims' own records suggest he housed and operated on up to a dozen enslaved women, he only bothered to record the names of three: Anarcha, Betsey, and Lucy.

• Anarcha: Anarcha was only 17 years old when she experienced a traumatic, three-day labor that resulted in both a vesicovaginal and a rectovaginal fistula. She was the first patient Sims acquired for his experiments in 1845. Over the course of four years, Sims subjected Anarcha to an agonizing 30 surgeries before he finally perfected his technique using silver wire sutures.

• Lucy: Lucy was 18 years old when she was handed over to Sims. She was the subject of one of Sims' early, failed experiments. During her procedure, Sims placed a sponge in her urethra to drain urine, leaving it there for days. The sponge contracted and fused with her surrounding tissue, causing severe sepsis. Sims later wrote in his autobiography that Lucy suffered extreme agony, experiencing severe inflammation and almost dying from the infection his negligence caused.

• Betsey: Like Anarcha and Lucy, Betsey was a young enslaved woman who had suffered a fistula from childbirth. She was similarly housed in Sims' backyard hospital and subjected to repeated, excruciating experimental surgeries.

The Agony and Exploitation of Anarcha, Betsey, and Lucy, and unnamed others

For more than a century, Dr. J. Marion Sims was venerated as the "father of modern gynecology." His statues graced the grounds of state capitols and the streets of New York City, and his name was immortalized in medical textbooks for his pioneering surgical techniques and inventions, such as the vaginal speculum. However, the foundational knowledge that earned Sims his historical prestige was extracted through the profound suffering and systemic exploitation of young Black enslaved women. Grounding this history in reality requires shifting the focus away from the "pioneer" and onto the true founders of modern gynecology: Anarcha, Betsey, Lucy, and several other unnamed enslaved women who endured unimaginable cruelty in the name of medical advancement.

In the mid-19th century United States, the bodies of enslaved Black people were considered property, legally and socially stripped of autonomy. They were bought, sold, and utilized not only for agricultural labor but also as capital for breeding. It was within this brutal economic framework that Sims operated in Montgomery, Alabama, during the 1840s.

Sims became interested in curing a devastating medical condition known as a vesicovaginal fistula (VVF). A fistula is a tear between the vagina and the bladder (and sometimes the rectum), typically caused by prolonged, obstructed labor. In an era before the widespread use of cesarean sections, days-long labor could result in tissue necrosis, leaving the mother with chronic incontinence, severe pain, and foul-smelling infections. Because enslaved women with fistulas were no longer able to work at full capacity or produce more children, their enslavers considered them "damaged property." Recognizing an opportunity to make a name for himself, Sims offered to take these women off their owners' hands, housing them in a makeshift backyard hospital where he could experiment on them until he found a cure.

The cruelty these women experienced at Sims' hands was multi-layered, encompassing physical agony, psychological terror, and the total deprivation of bodily autonomy.

First and foremost was the lack of consent. As enslaved women, Anarcha, Betsey, and Lucy possessed no legal right to refuse Sims' scalpel. They were confined to his backyard hospital from 1845 to 1849, entirely at the mercy of his ambition.

Furthermore, these surgeries were performed without anesthesia. While the use of ether as a surgical anesthetic was demonstrated and made public in 1846, right in the middle of Sims' experiments, he chose not to use it on his enslaved patients. Sims' decision was rooted in the prevailing racist medical ideologies of the 19th century, which falsely posited that Black people had thicker skin, less sensitive nervous systems, and a higher tolerance for pain than white people. To perform his surgeries, Sims would have the women placed in what is now known as the Sims position, resting on their hands and knees, while their bodies were physically restrained by several male doctors.

The physical pain of having one's vaginal and pelvic tissues cut, stitched, and manipulated repeatedly without numbing agents is unfathomable. Yet, Sims wrote of their surgeries as if they were routine mechanical adjustments.

Perhaps one of the most perverse cruelties of Sims' practice was the forced complicity of the women themselves. As the experiments dragged on and repeatedly failed, the white male physicians and apprentices who had initially helped Sims hold the women down grew sickened by the horrific nature of the surgeries and abandoned him. Left without surgical assistants, Sims trained Anarcha, Betsey, Lucy, and the other enslaved women to assist him. These women were forced to sponge the blood, administer the instruments, and physically restrain one another while Sims cut into their bodies. They became the first surgical nurses in gynecological history, tending to each other's wounds and infections in a shared nightmare of captivity.

When Sims finally perfected his technique in 1849, which was measured by curing Anarcha's fistula on his 30th attempt, he moved to New York, established the Woman's Hospital, and began treating wealthy white women. For these patients, he utilized anesthesia. He achieved international fame, while the women whose bodies served as his trial ground were sent back to their enslavers to resume lives of forced labor.

Today, some of the medical community and some historians are actively re-evaluating this dark chapter. The removal of Sims' statue from Central Park in New York in 2018 marked a symbolic shift away from idolizing the physician and toward honoring his victims. Anarcha, Betsey, and Lucy are now recognized as the Mothers of Gynecology. Acknowledging their names and the brutal reality of their experiences is a necessary step in confronting the deeply embedded roots of medical racism and ensuring that the true cost of medical progress is never forgotten.

Written by Tamara Rose

Sources 

• Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present.                                                                Washington, Harriet A 

• Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology.          Owens, Deirdre Cooper