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“…drafting ethical prohibitions…”

Sims was in a tricky position—Isaac Hays was already his editor at the American Journal of the Medical Sciences, and Alexander Stevens was soon to become one of the powerful physicians in New York who would hold his fate in his hands. It wasn’t until much later—when he was elected to the presidency of the AMA—that Sims made his thoughts on medical ethics public.

“The Secret Kappa Lambda Society of Hippocrates (and the Origin of the American Medical Association’s Principles of Medical Ethics),” Charles T. Ambrose, Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, Vol. 7, 2005, p. 53.

“…to advance his station.”

Sims made his thoughts clear on earlier ethical practices in his presidential address to the annual convention of the AMA, in 1876. Although the quoted material speaks to medical advertising, the rest of his career hints at the disdain he would have felt for the Code of Ethics’ initial prohibitions.

The full text of the AMA’s annual reports can be downloaded from their website.

“…gloomy prognostications…advertise cures…hold a patent…”

The AMA’s original Code of Ethics was included in its 1847 annual report, pp. 94, 98. The AMA’s annual reports can be downloaded from their website.

“…five-dollar initiation…”

1847 Constitution of the Medical Association of Montgomery, p. 6. The original manuscript is held at the Mobile Medical Museum and Archives in Mobile, Alabama.

“…adopted the entirety…”

1847 Constitution of the Medical Association of Montgomery, p. 11. The original manuscript is held at the Mobile Medical Museum and Archives in Mobile, Alabama.

“…particular to females.”

1847 Constitution of the Medical Association of Montgomery, p. 15. The original manuscript is held at the Mobile Medical Museum and Archives in Mobile, Alabama.

“…a singular dogma…”

1847 Constitution of the Medical Association of Montgomery, p. 19. The original manuscript is held at the Mobile Medical Museum and Archives in Mobile, Alabama.

“…it wasn’t working.”

I assume here that Sims must have realized earlier than he eventually claimed that his clamp suture was never going to work as he hoped. As will be seen in later chapters, Bozeman dismissed Sims’s claim of a perfect cure, and others too suggested that Sims’s method worked only on certain types of fistulae, or was more difficult to execute than he had claimed. He abandoned the clamp suture completely just seven years after claiming it as the cure’s one, needful thing.

“…the doctors who had succeeded…”

See “There had been occasional cures,” above.

“…the gum elastic catheter…”

Sims will steal more from Gosset later.

“Advantages of the Gilt-Wire Suture,” Montague Gosset, The Lancet, Vol. 1, 1834, p. 347.

“…the silver tube…”

“Vesico-Vaginal Fistula,” John Peter Mettauer, The Boston Medical Surgical Journal, Vol. 22, 1840, p. 155.

“Case of Vesico-Vaginal Fistula, Successfully Treated by an Operation,” George Hayward, The American Journal of the Medical Sciences, Vol. 24, 1839, p. 286.

“…lead wire for suture material…”

Sims did not explain why he was unsuccessful with lead wire. Lead is, in fact, a softer metal than silver.

“Vesico-Vaginal Fistula,” John Peter Mettauer, The Boston Medical Surgical Journal, Vol. 22, 1840, p. 155.

SIMS, J. Marion, (1885). The Story of my Life, ed. by H. Marion-Sims. D. Appleton & Co: New York, p. 244.

Sims, J. M., & New York Academy of Medicine. (1858). Silver sutures in surgery. New York: S.S. & W. Wood, p. 59.