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“…an utterly foolhardy quest.”

There is compression and inference at work in describing this portion of Sims’s experiments. As already noted, the problem with the Alabama fistula experiments is that Sims never described them in detail. Particularly the latter portion of the experiments, the last year-and-a-half or so—Sims described it all with a line or two. He does not describe the first time he called on his experimental subjects to be his assistants, nor does he describe the procedures that will lead up to his experiments with lead shot to help him tighten the sutures. My description here is an informed inference, guided by readers with extensive clinical experience, and there is compression in that there is no indication in Sims’s work that he began to glimpse the possibility of a cure (one which would fail, in any event) in the first experiment he performed with the enslaved women assisting him. Nevertheless, I believe this version of events to be largely consistent with what is known and what is likely given the circumstances.