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“…to observe surgeries…”

Zakrzewska, M. E., & Vietor, A. C. (1924). A woman's quest; the life of Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. New York, London: D. Appleton and Company, p. 226.

“He summered in Portland…”

Harris, S. (1950). Woman's surgeon: The life story of J. Marion Sims. New York: Macmillan, p. 144.

“…Woman’s Hospital’s first official donor.”

See “…a uterine tumor,…” above.

Letter from Horatio Storer to Dr. Walsh, February 1, 1922.

Storer’s letters are available at horatiostorer.net.

“…he conspired with Barker and Stuart…”

See “…for Woman’s Hospital to come to pass…,” above.

“…the precise purpose of Woman’s Hospital.”

It can be inferred that Sims sold the idea of Woman’s Hospital in two different ways—for two different audiences. The Board of Lady Managers—who will come to play a major role in Sims’s fate—eventually kicked back against cancer surgeries at the hospital. It’s not what they believed the hospital was for. There are also conflicting accounts of the hospital’s core mission, from those who recollected its motives from the earliest days.

“Editorial Interview with Dr. J. Marion Sims: A Full Exposition of the Points in the Controversy between Drs. Peaslee, Emmet, and Thomas, and Dr. Sims,” The St. Louis Clinical Record, Vol. 4, No. 6, September 1877, p. 170.

“Personal Reminiscences Associated with the Progress of Gynaecoogy,” Thomas Addis Emmet, The American Gynaecological and Obstetrical Journal, May 1900, p. 386.

“…traveling from house to house…”

From the mid-point of Sims’s labors.

SIMS, J. Marion, (1885). The Story of my Life, ed. by H. Marion-Sims. D. Appleton & Co: New York, p. 283.

“…a larger version of his backyard clinic…”

See “…the precise purpose of Woman's Hospital,” above.

“…not the scandal it had been in Montgomery.”

See “…a serious word,” above.

“…the low station that was prescribed to them…”

See “As with women and children…,” above.

In his public writings, Sims was never as direct as this—particularly after he had relocated to the North—but this is in keeping with the sentiment of the time, and it is in keeping with the sentiments of the professors he had admired as a student.