Page 281
“…the same dread of having her vagina examined…”
“…her husband had threatened divorce.”
“…the edges of the hymen.”
“…into the sphincter muscle…”
“…experimenting on her daughter.”
“…the befuddled mother…”
“…he’d learned a great deal.”
“A few weeks later…”
“…an unknown condition…”
“…a fourth case appeared…”
“…and a fifth.”
“He now conceived of a name…”
“…he devised a full cure…”
“…a chance for publication.”
“…to predominately affect women of means.”
“As the cases piled up…”
“…his own journey to Europe.”
“…besmirching Sims’s name…”
“…Brown had switched from the clamp suture…”
“…Simpson was criticizing Sims…”
“…the same dread of having her vagina examined…”
Sims, J. M. (1990). Silver sutures in surgery; together with Clinical notes on uterine surgery. Birmingham, Ala: Classics of Obstetrics & Gynecology Library, p. 332.
“…her husband had threatened divorce.”
Sims, J. M. (1990). Silver sutures in surgery; together with Clinical notes on uterine surgery. Birmingham, Ala: Classics of Obstetrics & Gynecology Library, p. 332.
“…the edges of the hymen.”
Sims, J. M. (1990). Silver sutures in surgery; together with Clinical notes on uterine surgery. Birmingham, Ala: Classics of Obstetrics & Gynecology Library, p. 332.
“…into the sphincter muscle…”
Sims, J. M. (1990). Silver sutures in surgery; together with Clinical notes on uterine surgery. Birmingham, Ala: Classics of Obstetrics & Gynecology Library, p. 332.
“…experimenting on her daughter.”
Sims, J. M. (1990). Silver sutures in surgery; together with Clinical notes on uterine surgery. Birmingham, Ala: Classics of Obstetrics & Gynecology Library, p. 333.
“…the befuddled mother…”
Sims, J. M. (1990). Silver sutures in surgery; together with Clinical notes on uterine surgery. Birmingham, Ala: Classics of Obstetrics & Gynecology Library, p. 333.
“…he’d learned a great deal.”
Sims, J. M. (1990). Silver sutures in surgery; together with Clinical notes on uterine surgery. Birmingham, Ala: Classics of Obstetrics & Gynecology Library, p. 333.
“A few weeks later…”
Sims, J. M. (1990). Silver sutures in surgery; together with Clinical notes on uterine surgery. Birmingham, Ala: Classics of Obstetrics & Gynecology Library, p. 333.
“…an unknown condition…”
As happened with vesico-vaginal fistula (See “…ignorance of the previous literature…,” above), Sims would soon be criticized for failing to be aware of previous work on the condition of mysterious vaginal pain. This will be documented in a later chapter.
Sims, J. M. (1990). Silver sutures in surgery; together with Clinical notes on uterine surgery. Birmingham, Ala: Classics of Obstetrics & Gynecology Library, p. 331.
“…a fourth case appeared…”
Sims, J. M. (1990). Silver sutures in surgery; together with Clinical notes on uterine surgery. Birmingham, Ala: Classics of Obstetrics & Gynecology Library, p. 333.
“…and a fifth.”
Sims, J. M. (1990). Silver sutures in surgery; together with Clinical notes on uterine surgery. Birmingham, Ala: Classics of Obstetrics & Gynecology Library, pp. 333-34.
“He now conceived of a name…”
“On Vaginismus,” J. Marion Sims, Transactions of the Obstetrical Society of London, Vol. 3, 1862, p. 362.
“…he devised a full cure…”
“On Vaginismus,” J. Marion Sims, Transactions of the Obstetrical Society of London, Vol. 3, 1862, p. 364.
“…a chance for publication.”
Sims’s paper “On Vaginismus,” later worked into book Clinical Notes on Uterine Surgery (with telling omissions) was published three times, in the Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, the American Medical Times, and in the Transactions of the Obstetrical Society of London. He was abroad by this time, and the criticism he received on delivering the paper in London will be documented in a later chapter.
“…to predominately affect women of means.”
Sims left this unstated, but all of the cases he describes are married women, longing for children—and all of them seem to come from his private practice, though some eventually take beds at Woman’s Hospital. Sims would go from never having seen anything like the condition to more than thirty-nine cases, in a period of a few years. I don’t think it’s reasonable to attribute this to some sort of spontaneous epidemic, and I doubt Sims’s claim that the cases all came to him by chance—it’s all part of the improbable narrative in which his various “successes” are presented as accident and happenstance (just as they had with obstetric fistula).
“As the cases piled up…”
Sims, J. M. (1990). Silver sutures in surgery; together with Clinical notes on uterine surgery. Birmingham, Ala: Classics of Obstetrics & Gynecology Library, p. 334.
“…his own journey to Europe.”
Beyond publishing extensively on the subject (see “…a chance for publication,” above), Sims would attempt to introduce the surgery in France, leading to a backlash and controversy, as will be documented in a later chapter.
“…besmirching Sims’s name…”
This is from Sims’s account of his time in Paris in 1861. Late in life, Sims would not even write out Nathan Bozeman’s name. When he was dictating his autobiography, Bozeman had taken a position on staff at Woman’s Hospital, and Sims held only an honorary appointment at the institution he founded.
SIMS, J. Marion, (1885). The Story of my Life, ed. by H. Marion-Sims. D. Appleton & Co: New York, p. 316.
“…Brown had switched from the clamp suture…”
Bozeman, N., & Chaillé, S. E. (1857). Urethro-vaginal and vesico-vaginal fistules: Remarks upon their peculiarities and complications : their classification and treatment : modifications of the button suture : report of cases successfully treated. Montgomery: Barrett & Wimbish, p. 5.
“…Simpson was criticizing Sims…”
What Simpson did was emphasize that in surgical experiments in England even pigs were given generous doses of chloroform.
Simpson, J. Y., & Simpson, A. R. (1872). Clinical lectures on the diseases of women, Vol. 3, Edinburgh: Black, p. 37.