For Lucy and Anarcha

[mercuryblues]

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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[sheshe2]

1. Thanks for all the research, mercuryblues.

Both articles are very interesting reads.

The poor woman [with a vesicovaginal fistula] is now reduced to a condition of the most piteous description, compared with which, most of the other physical evils of life sink into utter insignificance. The urine passing into the vagina as soon as it is secreted, inflames and excoriates its mucous lining, covering it with calcareous depositions, and causing great suffering. It trickles constantly down her thighs, irritates the integument with its acrid qualities, keeps her clothing constantly soaked, and exhales without cessation its peculiar odour, insupportable to herself and those all around her. In cases where the sloughing has been extensive, and the loss of substance of the tissues great, and where neither palliative nor curable means have availed for the relief of the sufferer, she has been compelled to sit constantly on a chair, or stool, with a hole in the seat, through which the urine descends into a vessel beneath.

snip

Conclusion

It is difficult to make fair assessments of the medical ethics of past practitioners from a distant vantage point in a society that has moved in a different direction, developed different values, and has wrestled—often unsuccessfully—with ethical issues of sex, race, gender, and class that were not perceived as problematic by those who lived during an earlier period of history. J Marion Sims was a dedicated and conscientious physician who lived and worked in a slaveholding society. As such, he was often called upon to care for slaves with legitimate medical needs. Among the needs that many 19th century women faced—both white and black—was the need for treatment of catastrophic complications of childbirth such as vesicovaginal fistulas. The operations carried out by Sims on black slave women from 1845–1849 represented his attempt to cure them of an odious and devastating condition that was then considered incurable. His operations, which at first were unsuccessful, were performed explicitly for therapeutic purposes and, as far as we can tell from the surviving sources, were carried out with the patients' cooperation and consent. At the time Sims began his efforts to close vesicovaginal fistulas, there was no effective alternative to surgical treatment and the quality of life to which such patients were reduced by their injuries was acknowledged by all medical writers of the time as unendurable. There is no doubt that slaves in the mid‐19th century American South were a “vulnerable” population who were often subjected to significant abuse by the slaveholding system. To suggest, however, that for that reason alone no attempts should have been made to cure the maladies of such enslaved women, especially when they were desperate for help and no other viable alternatives existed, seems ethically bankrupt itself. Whatever his other failings may have been, J Marion Sims pursued this clinical goal with vigour, determination, and perseverance, and both his patients then and countless thousands of women since, benefited from his success.

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

[mercuryblues]

2. I wish

I could say it was a pleasure. I read about this a while back and was absolutely stunned. The more I read about Sims, the more the phrase Nazi before his time, came to mind. Women's medical science has its roots in misogyny and slavery. Is it any doubt why even so many years later women are still fighting for rights over their body? Still fighting misinformation on how our bodies really work.

If it has taken women this long to get where we are, how much longer will it take to get where we need to be.

[sheshe2]

3. Go see a response from Triana here.

Actually, I would love you to read my OP as well, I found it last night.

Both will make you sad, it never seems to stop for women of all colors.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026229492#post5

thanks merc.

[mercuryblues]

4. I think I am

about a 1/2 a step ahead of you today. I was reading and replying to your OP when the notice came I had a reply here.

So in a bullet point fashion

>women were sold as slaves for breeding capabilities.
> One doctor that I know of, used those women (and babies) for medical experiments, when the birthin' went wrong
>That doctor is acclaimed as the Father of Gyno, the women's accounts were never written down because it was illegal for blacks
to read or write
> if a slave came down with medical issues, they were lazy and immoral
> black women today are "breeders" if they have children out of wedlock (white women are unwed mothers)
>during Jim Crow blacks were pushed into abysmal schools under the "separate but equal"
>when blacks struggle in todays schools, they are lazy and their parents are thugs.

[sheshe2]

6. I think that you summed it up in a nutshell, merc.

Sickening is what it is. Our History shames me.

[sheshe2]

5. I just cross posted this to the African American Group

Here's the link.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/118712462

[marym625]

7. Not surprising

Just despicable. Outrageous. Horrifying. Inexcusable. But not surprising.

Just like most women dying from a hysterectomy, they, the first, were really just guinea pigs without anesthesia. I'm sure that more slaves were used than we'll ever know. Probably didn't record those failures.

And in the US, more hysterectomies are performed than anywhere else in the world.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysterectomy

2003, over 600,000 hysterectomies were performed in the United States alone, of which over 90% were performed for benign conditions.[1] Such rates being highest in the industrialized world has led to the major controversy that hysterectomies are being largely performed for unwarranted and unnecessary reasons

And we all know why they named it hysterectomy in the first place, to remove the hysteria.

Men.

Thanks for the post. Great information.