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“…twice as often as the others.”

One of the enduring mysteries of the Alabama fistula experiments is why Anarcha was experimented on so many times. Today, an attempt to close a difficult fistula may be made five or six times—or fewer—before the condition is declared untreatable (though African surgeons are now finding ways to cure fistulae that have previously been thought incurable). Anarcha was experimented on many more times than this. One likely solution to this mystery is the fact that Anarcha’s two fistulae made her a more or less double candidate for a “cure.”

As with a lot of Sims’s writing, his description of Anarcha’s condition is duplicitously vague while giving the appearance of being very specific. Most commentators have concluded from this that Anarcha had two fistulae—not a wholly uncommon condition—and some have supposed that Sims’s “cure” of Anarcha must have meant that he cured one fistula, and then the other. I doubt this. Sims’s goal was to cure a fistula, and use the announcement to advance his career. While he did wait after the first “cure” of Anarcha in 1849 to announce his results, he never referred to Anarcha again after claiming to have cured her. Apart from a stray reference in his autobiography—never before mentioned even though curing a fistula was the goal—there was no detailed description of curing her other fistula, even as he described curing Betsey and Lucy.

The record is incomplete, and I have opted for what seems to me to be the most likely scenario: Anarcha’s two fistulae made her a candidate for twice as many surgeries as the other women who were part of Sims’s experiments.

SIMS, J. Marion, (1885). The Story of my Life, ed. by H. Marion-Sims. D. Appleton & Co: New York, p. 240.

Harris, S. (1950). Woman's surgeon: The life story of J. Marion Sims. New York: Macmillan, p. 83.

“She lost count…”

See “…thirty experiments,” above.

The number of experiments Anarcha was subjected to varies according to source. Thirty procedures became part of Sims’s early narrative, but the thirty procedures were used to characterize Sims’s indefatigability, rather than Anarcha’s suffering. However, as Sims did not keep detailed records, and was sustaining a busy practice at the same time, I think it’s unlikely that Sims would have actually known the precise number. I believe it is both more haunting, and more accurate, in the end, to suggest that everyone involved simply lost tract of the number of experiments Anarcha endured.

“…never moved or made a sound…”

Sims’s Silver Sutures address did not specify that Anarcha was the first cure, but it’s certainly the case—as will be shown later—that Sims was already telling the story of Anarcha and the others in New York when he delivered this speech. His autobiography, in any event, makes it clear.

It follows, too, that Sims would have been more inclined to experiment on a woman who did not give voice to the extreme pain and discomfort of the experiment. Given the face that Betsey and Lucy were both described as enduring significant pain, there is no reason to conclude that Anarcha’s stoicism—if Sims’s can even be trusted on this point—has anything to do with her race or her status as an enslaved woman, as Sims’s biographer has claimed.

Sims, J. M., & New York Academy of Medicine. (1858). Silver sutures in surgery. New York: S.S. & W. Wood, p. 60.

SIMS, J. Marion, (1885). The Story of my Life, ed. by H. Marion-Sims. D. Appleton & Co: New York, p. 240.

Harris, S. (1950). Woman's surgeon: The life story of J. Marion Sims. New York: Macmillan, p. 83.

“In January 1848…”

See “Anarcha learned she had been sold…” above.

“…less and less about what he was doing…”

Sims simultaneously describes sinking into a great despair over the failed experiments and yet having great confidence that transferred to his experimental subjects. I don’t believe the latter. This is from Sims’s autobiography, produced late in life, when his reputation had been battered by several scandals and when Bozeman was pestering him for additional details about the Alabama fistula experiments (which were never supplied). The autobiography was unfinished, and contradicts itself on many points. And it was in Sims’s interest to characterize his subjects as fawning and grateful. Even biographers of Sims who knew that he was a serial exaggerator, if not an outright liar, have tended to accept his account on this point. I don’t.

SIMS, J. Marion, (1885). The Story of my Life, ed. by H. Marion-Sims. D. Appleton & Co: New York, pp. 242-43.

“…bent tubes of silver…”

“On the Treatment of Vesico-Vaginal Fistula,” J. Marion Sims, The American Journal of the Medical Sciences, Vol. XXIII, 1852, p. 78.

“…he was now worried…”

Sims’s is crafting the romantic narrative of his career. Abounding in this passage, as well, are claims that he was all alone, but steered by a divine hand.

Sims, J. M., & New York Academy of Medicine. (1858). Silver sutures in surgery. New York: S.S. & W. Wood, pp. 54, 57.

“In 1848…”

Ames’s title pretty much says it all.

This is a rare document, privately printed. A copy is included in materials held at the Alabama Department of Archives and History in Montgomery, Alabama.

“Some Account of an Epidemic Cerebro-Spinal Meningitis, which Prevailed in Montgomery, Ala., in the Winter and Spring of 1848,” Silas Ames, p. 1.

“…traveled to Mobile…”

Letter from J. Marion Sims to William Jarvis, February 20, 1848.

Sims’s private letters to the family of George O. Jarvis, and subsequently to Jarvis himself, are held at the Hartford Medical Society Collections in Hartford, Connecticut.

“…the man had typhus.”

Letter from J. Marion Sims to William Jarvis, February 21, 1848.

Sims’s private letters to the family of George O. Jarvis, and subsequently to Jarvis himself, are held at the Hartford Medical Society Collections in Hartford, Connecticut.

“…the largest room in Montgomery Hall…”

Letter from J. Marion Sims to William Jarvis, February 27, 1848.

Sims’s private letters to the family of George O. Jarvis, and subsequently to Jarvis himself, are held at the Hartford Medical Society Collections in Hartford, Connecticut.

“…Anarcha had once saved his life…”

Letter from J. Marion Sims to George O. Jarvis, April 7, 1848. See “It was a strange word: Anarcha” and “…water when he asked for it…,” above.

It’s here that Sims names “Anarca” as the nurse who was caring for Jarvis. Sims repeats the name, and the underscoring is his. I think there is no other viable interpretation of “our Anarca” than that Sims is acknowledging that he too knows what it’s like to be cared for by Anarcha—and that Sims had already communicated this to Jarvis.

Images from this letter appear in the printed book.

Sims’s private letters to the family of George O. Jarvis, and subsequently to Jarvis himself, are held at the University of Connecticut Health Library, Farmington, Connecticut.

“…he could feel easy about his recovery…”

Letter from J. Marion Sims to George O. Jarvis, April 7, 1848. The language is borrowed from another letter in which Sims is describing Anarcha’s care for another patient. Images from this letter appear in the printed book.

Sims’s private letters to the family of George O. Jarvis, and subsequently to Jarvis himself, are held at the Hartford Medical Society Collections in Hartford, Connecticut.