General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe 'Father of Modern Gynecology' Performed Shocking Experiments on Slaves
James Marion Sims developed pioneering tools and surgical techniques related to womens reproductive health, and is credited as the father of modern gynecology. The 19th-century physician has been lionized with statues in New York City, South Carolina and Pennsylvania.
But because Sims research was conducted on enslaved Black women without anesthesia, medical ethicists, historians and others have called for those monuments to be removedor for them tobe reconfigured as tributes to the enslaved women known to have endured his experiments.
Sims, who practiced medicine at a time when treating women was considered distasteful and rarely done, invented the vaginal speculum, a tool used for dilation and examination. He also pioneered a surgical technique to repair vesicovaginal fistula, a common 19th-century complication of childbirth in which a tear between the uterus and bladder caused constant pain and urine leakage.Simss defenders say the Southern-born slaveholder was simply a man of his time for whom the end justified the meansand that enslaved women with fistulas were likely to have wanted the treatment badly enough that they would have agreed to take part in his experiments. But history hasnt recorded their voices, and consent from their owners, who had a strong financial interest in their recovery, was the only legal requirement of the time.
Critics say Sims cared more about the experiments than in providing therapeutic treatment, and that he caused untold suffering by operating under the racist notion that Black people did not feel pain. They say his use of enslaved Black bodies as medical test subjects falls into a long, ethically bereft history of medical test subjects falls into a long, ethically bereft history of medical apartheid that includes the Tuskegee syphilis experiment and Henrietta Lacks.
https://www.history.com/news/the-father-of-modern-gynecology-performed-shocking-experiments-on-slaves
His statue was removed.
bobbieinok
(12,858 posts)On their knees. Unclothed, he experimented on them. No anesthesia. The pain must have been excruciating.
bobbieinok
(12,858 posts)One of them was operated on multiple times without anesthesia, because it was believed that blacks, esp black women, did not feel pain like whites did!
...npr.org/transcripts from Feb 2016
IIRC this is the discussion of a forthcoming book
(It's so irritating that I can't link on this device)
MustLoveBeagles
(11,589 posts)Aristus
(66,316 posts)Anyone indifferent to suffering, including and especially if he is causing it, is a monster. Bottom line.
sheshe2
(83,731 posts)Wounded Bear
(58,645 posts)we should be so proud.
Karadeniz
(22,499 posts)lpbk2713
(42,753 posts)Even by 1800's standards.
mcar
(42,300 posts)I cannot imagine what those women experienced.
Niagara
(7,595 posts)oasis
(49,376 posts)We had our own Josef Mengele.
SS physician Josef Mengele conducted inhumane medical experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz. He was the most prominent of a group of Nazi doctors who conducted experiments that often caused great harm or death to the prisoners.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/josef-mengele
NurseJackie
(42,862 posts)Me.
(35,454 posts)MLAA
(17,277 posts)Truly. I dont believe in hell. But if Im wrong he should be there getting experimented on without pain meds daily.
sheshe2
(83,731 posts)Bettie
(16,089 posts)I had read about him previously. He was a monster.
ansible
(1,718 posts)Unit 731 of the Japanese army performed some of the most horrific medical experiments in human history, murdering thousands of people. And after WW2 the doctors in charge were given immunity by the US in exchange for their medical data. They were never punished and went on to lead normal lives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731#Surrender_and_immunity
WhiskeyGrinder
(22,325 posts)Rest in power, Anarcha, Betsey, Lucy, and those whose names we don't know now.
Gothmog
(145,126 posts)smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)Men should never be allowed to become gynecologists in the first place. I can't imagine why they would want to be other than to harm or exploit women. They don't understand what it is like to be woman so how could they possibly understand what we go through?
JCMach1
(27,556 posts)is also torture and horrific.
Imagine child birth caused a rip, or necrosis between your vagina and large intestine with endless debilitating infections because feces was entering where it isn't supposed to be.
Was he a slave owning Southerner and racist: yes
Did he want to help women: yes
Did it advance gynecology: yes
Would it be approved today as is: no
Did the 19th century suck for women and black people: yes
As history often is, the story is a bit more complex than presented in the OP.
Crunchy Frog
(26,579 posts)brer cat
(24,558 posts)still_one
(92,130 posts)The Syphilis Study at Tuskegee lasted until 1972.
It is an outrage and tragedy, and extends to the care in the way some doctors treat patients today
horrible, yet revealing of the horrors we are capable of visiting upon one another in the name of science, Tuskeegee syphilis experiments come to mind or just because one feels superior to another when the fact is we all bleed red, cry, laugh and die. Thank you sheshe for this
lapucelle
(18,245 posts)...there are no words.