Page 166

“…more than four days.”

Emmet, T. A. (1911). Incidents of my life: Professional, literary, social; with services in the cause of Ireland. New York, Putnam, p. 152.

“…a case of rheumatic fever…”

Emmet, T. A. (1911). Incidents of my life: Professional, literary, social; with services in the cause of Ireland. New York, Putnam, p. 153.

“…sailed with his mother and sister…”

Emmet, T. A. (1911). Incidents of my life: Professional, literary, social; with services in the cause of Ireland. New York, Putnam, p. 153.

“…a ball…colossal whales…a twenty-seven-foot shark…”

Emmet, T. A. (1911). Incidents of my life: Professional, literary, social; with services in the cause of Ireland. New York, Putnam, pp. 155-56.

“Tragedy had struck.”

Emmet, T. A. (1911). Incidents of my life: Professional, literary, social; with services in the cause of Ireland. New York, Putnam, p. 157.

“…the noted water-cure establishment…”

Emmet, T. A. (1911). Incidents of my life: Professional, literary, social; with services in the cause of Ireland. New York, Putnam, p. 157.

“…Catherine Duncan, of Alabama.”

While it is virtually certain that Catherine Duncan would have told Emmet of an accident she had just been involved in, I don’t, given the many inaccuracies in Emmet’s book, believe his account of the accident to be unassailable.

Emmet, T. A. (1911). Incidents of my life: Professional, literary, social; with services in the cause of Ireland. New York, Putnam, pp. 157-58.

“Catherine returned to New York…”

I am assuming this to be the case, as they would agree to be married in just a few months’ time.

“One afternoon, they went for a walk…”

In two different versions of this story, Emmet is uncharacteristically vague, on both occasions, about who was accompanying him on this excursion, even avoiding specifying the gender of his companion. He left the scene out of his own autobiography, published years later. Sims’s biographer says it was a mutual acquaintance from Alabama, which would be consistent with Sims’s claim that he, too, knew Catherine Duncan (See “…had known the Duncan family…,” above).

The most commonsense explanation of why Emmet is being evasive on this point is that his companion was the woman he was then courting, and he is disguising is own role in having brought Anarcha north to be experimented on again. His story, too, depended on Sims’s narrative that Anarcha had been cured.

A Memoir of Dr. James Marion Sims,” Thomas Addis Emmet, The New York Medical Journal, January 5, 1884, p. 1.

“…grazing land for goats.”

Emmet, T. A., & Woman's Hospital (New York, N.Y.). (1893). Reminiscences of the founders of the Woman's Hospital Association. New York: Stuyvesant Press, p. 1. First printed in the New York Journal of Gynaecology and Obstetrics.

“…all the way to the Hudson River…”

Emmet, T. A., & Woman's Hospital (New York, N.Y.). (1893). Reminiscences of the founders of the Woman's Hospital Association. New York: Stuyvesant Press, p. 1. First printed in the New York Journal of Gynaecology and Obstetrics.

“…the nick of a comet…”

See “…a hole in the daytime sky,” above.

“They approached a lone house…”

“A Memoir of Dr. James Marion Sims,” Thomas Addis Emmet, The New York Medical Journal, January 5, 1884, p. 1.

“…recognized the sign outside…”

Emmet, T. A., & Woman's Hospital (New York, N.Y.). (1893). Reminiscences of the founders of the Woman's Hospital Association. New York: Stuyvesant Press, p. 1. First printed in the New York Journal of Gynaecology and Obstetrics.