Page 185

“…the doomed, stabbed slave.”

See “…a young slave was mortally stabbed…,” above.

“…secretly it would aim its sights…”

See “…his vision began to grow…,” above. As noted earlier, Sims consistently denied that opening a hospital was on his mind when he went to New York. However, he set up shop in the city in the fall of 1853, and by April 1854 he was delivering a lecture on the opening of a new hospital in the city. One must be far too credulous to believe Sims’s narrative on this point.

“…purchased his business and home.”

The official documents delineating the sale of Sims’s home and office to Bozeman are held at the Montgomery County Archives in Montgomery, Alabama. The quoted footnote is from an anonymous review that is believed to have been written by Bozeman himself, after his relationship with Sims soured.

“Silver Sutures in Surgery. The Anniversary Discourse before the New York Academy of Medicine,” anonymous, The North American Medico-Chirurgical Review, Vol. 2, 1858, p. 649.

“…lease them to good families.”

Sims casts himself here as a more kindly slave owner, going so far as to suggest that his slaves were not really “in slavery.” This has caused some commentators to falsely claim that Sims emancipated his slaves before he left Alabama. Even Sims’s biographer, however, recognized that Sims was continuing to profit from the people he owned.

SIMS, J. Marion, (1885). The Story of my Life, ed. by H. Marion-Sims. D. Appleton & Co: New York, pp. 265-66.

Harris, S. (1950). Woman's surgeon: The life story of J. Marion Sims. New York: Macmillan, p. 124.

“…an impressive but lonely home…”

See “They approached a lone house,” above.

SIMS, J. Marion, (1885). The Story of my Life, ed. by H. Marion-Sims. D. Appleton & Co: New York, p. 267.

“…with Jarvis in Connecticut…”

SIMS, J. Marion, (1885). The Story of my Life, ed. by H. Marion-Sims. D. Appleton & Co: New York, p. 267.

“…far too valuable a member of society…”

See “…a uterine tumor…,” above. As will be seen in later chapters, Sims sometimes explicitly state that women of the upper classes were not appropriate material for medical experimentation.

“…printed and distributed…”

Letter from Elizabeth Blackwell to Emily Blackwell, May 22, 1854. I’m very grateful to Janice Nimura for supplying me with a transcription of this letter, which is held in a private collection.

Harris, S. (1950). Woman's surgeon: The life story of J. Marion Sims. New York: Macmillan, pp. 126-27.

“…Berenbroick…”

Sims, J. M., & New York Academy of Medicine. (1858). Silver sutures in surgery. New York: S.S. & W. Wood, p. 23, ft.

“…Tieman…”

Sims is referring to Bozeman here, and I take the fact that his speculum appears on the same page that he is referring to the adjustments to his original device.

Sims, J. M., & New York Academy of Medicine. (1858). Silver sutures in surgery. New York: S.S. & W. Wood, pp. 26-27.

“…variations on the Sims position.”

In characteristic fashion, Sims’s later book misstates what he claimed in his articles. He had begun using a left-lateral position in the months immediately following the cure he claimed on Anarcha. The operation described here took place in November 1849.

Sims, J. M. (1990). Silver sutures in surgery; together with Clinical notes on uterine surgery. Birmingham, Ala: Classics of Obstetrics & Gynecology Library, p. 17.

“Two Cases of Vesico-Vaginal Fistula, Cured,” New York Medical Gazette and Journal of Health, Vol. 5, No. 1, January 1854, p. 5.