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“Stuart scoffed…”
This is as close as Sims comes to objecting to Stuart’s plan. As noted above (see “…because it had been advertised?” above), I suspect—though I don’t depict it here—that Sims was more comfortable with Stuart’s plan than he lets on. Regardless, it’s worth nothing that even three decades later Sims is taking pains to distance himself from what would have been seen as an ethical violation at the time—and, as will be seen in future chapters, Sims will eventually be censured for precisely this sort of thing in 1870.
SIMS, J. Marion, (1885). The Story of my Life, ed. by H. Marion-Sims. D. Appleton & Co: New York, p. 282.
“…like a card in a game of whist.”
See “…because it had been advertised?” and “Stuart scoffed…,” above. This is exactly what Sims would do—and he would go on to frequently blame Stuart when he was criticized for self-promotion.
“…the American Phrenological Journal.”
The journal’s profile of Sims would not be printed for several years.
“J. Marion Sims, M.D., Phrenological Character and Biography,” American Phrenological Journal, Vol. 26, No. 6, December 1857, p. 115.
“Sims had glimpsed presidents…”
SIMS, J. Marion, (1885). The Story of my Life, ed. by H. Marion-Sims. D. Appleton & Co: New York, p. 163.
“Greeley was an abolitionist…”
Greeley served as a congressman from 1847-49, and his run for the presidency in 1872 pretty much killed him.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Horace-Greeley
https://history.house.gov/People/Listing/G/GREELEY,-Horace-(G000405)/
“…steered clear of the subject of slavery.”
Neither Sims nor Stuart commented on whatever instructions Stuart might have offered Sims as they met the leading figures of the city’s newspapers, but it seems likely that Stuart would have warned Sims away from topics that would have upended their plans. Also, it seems unlikely that Greeley would have been willing to run an advertisement for Sims if he’d know that Sims experimented on enslaved women.
“…shown at once into Greeley’s office…”
I have riffed on, but not strayed from the spirit, of Sims’s abbreviated account of this meeting.
SIMS, J. Marion, (1885). The Story of my Life, ed. by H. Marion-Sims. D. Appleton & Co: New York, p. 282.