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“…first steam locomotive.”

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Peter-Cooper

“…a well-connected banker…”

The New York Times, May 5, 1910.

“…a widely read piece…”

“John Bull vs. French Therapeutics. Young America vs. British Surgery,” Fordyce Barker, The American Medical Monthly, June 1854.

“…Sims or the Young America…”

“John Bull vs. French Therapeutics. Young America vs. British Surgery,” Fordyce Barker, The American Medical Monthly, June 1854, p. 463.

“…with reason and science behind it.”

“John Bull vs. French Therapeutics. Young America vs. British Surgery,” Fordyce Barker, The American Medical Monthly, June 1854, p. 462.

“…the singular feature of the cure.”

“John Bull vs. French Therapeutics. Young America vs. British Surgery,” Fordyce Barker, The American Medical Monthly, June 1854, p. 464.

“…words failed to capture…”

“John Bull vs. French Therapeutics. Young America vs. British Surgery,” Fordyce Barker, The American Medical Monthly, June 1854, p. 464.

“…to becoming a dictator.”

See “…but a dictator,” above.

“…for Woman’s Hospital to come to pass…”

Thomas Addis Emmet, years later, contradicted Sims’s account (Sims credited Henri Stuart) about how the idea for an administrative board comprised of women came about. I’ve split the difference and suggested that both Henri Stuart and Fordyce Barker were involved in the initial planning of the board.

SIMS, J. Marion, (1885). The Story of my Life, ed. by H. Marion-Sims. D. Appleton & Co: New York, p. 298.

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. 2. First printed in the New York Journal of Gynaecology and Obstetrics.

“…Sims’s first assistant was to be a woman.”

As will be seen later in a later chapter, the Woman’s Hospital Board of Lady Managers insisted that Sims’s first assistant be a woman. Discussion of this, perhaps beginning with the women who had attended Sims’s lecture, had begun long before it was written into the bylaws.

“Woman in Medicine,” Mary Putnam Jacobi, included in Woman’s work in America, A.N. Meyer, ed. (1891), Henry Holt and Co.: New York, pp. 154-55.

“He placated her…”

Others have ascribed to Sims a preternatural ability to charm women—Blackwell sounds lulled into complacence here.

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.

“…the names of men she wished to propose…”

No one named Collins or Harris served on the Governor’s Board of Woman’s Hospital.

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.

“…so firmly opposed to women studying medicine…”

This is how Sims’s biographer described it—as already noted, Seale Harris did not fully cite his book, and had access to many sources that now appear to be lost.

Harris, S. (1950). Woman's surgeon: The life story of J. Marion Sims. New York: Macmillan, p. 134.

“…$200,000…”

Blackwell is so woefully naïve here about what the mission of Woman’s Hospital was to be that there is no other possible conclusion other than that Sims was actively deceiving her.

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.

“…Arsenal building…”

I am assuming that Sims had set his sights on the Arsenal building sometime earlier.

From the minutes of a meeting of the Board of Lady Managers of Woman’s Hospital, April 4, 1857. The minutes are held at the Arthur H. Aufses, Jr. Medical Archives and Mount Sinai Records office at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, New York.

https://www.centralparknyc.org/locations/arsenal