Page 125
“…as J.F.G. Mittag and medical school…”
See “…put your name to inventions…,” above.
“The full scope of the opportunity…”
I am speaking here to Sims’s motives, which I believe he took pains to disguise. For the most part, Sims attempted to depict his rise to prominence as a surgeon to happenstance, divine will, or both. I don’t trust him on this count. Other sources have taken note of the fact that Woman’s Hospital, in New York, was designed as a larger version of Sims’s “Negro Hospital” in Alabama. Based on these accounts, it seems impossible to avoid the conclusion—as his Alabama colleague William O. Baldwin noted—that Sims always had ambitions beyond Montgomery, and conceived of the idea of opening a fistula clinic in New York well before he left Alabama.
“Sketches and Reminiscences of the Life of Dr. J. Marion Sims,” William O. Baldwin, first delivered as a speech at a memorial meeting of the Medical and Surgical Society of Montgomery, and subsequently published in the Montgomery Advertiser. The speech was included as an appendix in Sims’s autobiography.
SIMS, J. Marion, (1885). The Story of my Life, ed. by H. Marion-Sims. D. Appleton & Co: New York, p. 430.
“…into Montgomery in 1840…”
SIMS, J. Marion, (1885). The Story of my Life, ed. by H. Marion-Sims. D. Appleton & Co: New York, p. 206.
“…that his wife expected and deserved…”
Sims’s need to marry up is part of what reveals that at this time in his life he was driven by money, not altruism.
See “…a snuff box…,” above.
“…weren’t nearly so combative…”
SIMS, J. Marion, (1885). The Story of my Life, ed. by H. Marion-Sims. D. Appleton & Co: New York, p. 207.
“…vacuum-tube inventions.”
“Arrival of Dr. J. Marion Sims,” Montgomery Daily Advertiser, March 27, 1877. A copy of this article is on file at the UAB Archives, University of Alabama at Birmingham, in Birmingham, AL. This material appears on p. 10 of the archive’s reproduction.