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“…only the troublemaker Alexander Stevens…”

“A Memoir of Dr. James Marion Sims,” Thomas Addis Emmet, The New York Medical Journal, January 5, 1884, p. 3.

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

“…inspired to open the abdomens of every young woman…”

When Thomas Addis Emmet says that Stevens was prescient, he means that Sims sought and achieved acclaim and renown for a variety of untested experimental surgeries, most of which would soon be debunked. Nevertheless, Sims had many imitators, and a great deal of injury resulted from Sims’s efforts to promote his own work as pioneering breakthroughs.

“A Memoir of Dr. James Marion Sims,” Thomas Addis Emmet, The New York Medical Journal, January 5, 1884, p. 3.

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

“…perform the operation anyway…”

See “…only the troublemaker Alexander Stevens…” and “…inspired to open the abdomens of every young woman…,” above.

Emmet’s accounts do not specifically indicate that Bridget Headley was the woman upon whom Sims had proposed to experiment, and furthermore Emmet claims that Sims was not allowed to perform his surgery. However, Headley’s case was recorded in the Woman’s Hospital first case record book (and left out of the third case record book), with remarkably little detail. Hence, I am speculating that Sims performed his operation, that Headley died, and that Sims took steps to see that her case was not documented fully, and was eventually expunged from the record. Before long, as will be documented in a future chapter, Woman’s Hospital would be bragging of having had no deaths at the hospital. The case record reveals otherwise.

“…illiterate chambermaid…”

I’ve not named her, but this is Margaret Brennan, who would go on to be Thomas Addis Emmet’s assistant for more than forty years. Brennan is supposed to have joined Woman’s Hospital from the beginning, which means that for a significant period of time—upwards of a year, at least—she would have worked with Sims alone. In suggesting that she assisted with a fatal surgery on Bridget Headley, I am proposing that Sims was repeating in New York what he had practiced in Alabama—performing experiments he had no intention of recording, relying only on assistants who could not reveal what he had done.

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

“Two other young doctors…”

Others expressed surprise with how the selection process was eventually decided. The other two men were F.U. Johnson and George Shrady, who would go on to be a champion of Sims’s statue in Central Park.

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.

SIMS, J. Marion, (1885). The Story of my Life, ed. by H. Marion-Sims. D. Appleton & Co: New York, pp. 299-300.

“…he knew how to charm society ladies…”

There are many accounts of Sims’s charisma and personal charm—with the caveat that he employed it to effect at moments when he was not getting exactly what he wanted. As will be seen in later chapters, Sims’s ability to mold the Board of Lady Managers to his will exhausted itself after the Civil War.

From the minutes of the November 1, 1855, meeting of the Woman’s Hospital Association. 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.

From an unsigned and uncited obituary of Sims held in the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill libraries.

“…rapping on Emmet’s door.”

Thomas Addis Emmet told this story on a couple of occasions. Sims never revealed it—which I take as an indication that Sims felt that it was in his interest to not reveal the true reason he sought out Emmet. He likely never considered the possibility that it would eventually be discovered that Emmet’s wife’s family had once enslaved Anarcha.

Emmet, T. A. (1911). Incidents of my life: Professional, literary, social; with services in the cause of Ireland. New York, Putnam, p. 166.

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

SIMS, J. Marion, (1885). The Story of my Life, ed. by H. Marion-Sims. D. Appleton & Co: New York, p. 300.

“The tallying work itself…”

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

“…take over the free fistula work…”

In addition to the majority of the fistula work, it was Thomas Addis Emmet who would produce Woman’s Hospital’s first case record books—including the many drawings contained inside them.

Emmet, T. A. (1911). Incidents of my life: Professional, literary, social; with services in the cause of Ireland. New York, Putnam, p. 167.