Page 63

“…identical to the first…”

SIMS, J. Marion, (1885). The Story of my Life, ed. by H. Marion-Sims. D. Appleton & Co: New York, pp. 143-44.

“…the end of Eberle’s chapter.”

SIMS, J. Marion, (1885). The Story of my Life, ed. by H. Marion-Sims. D. Appleton & Co: New York, p. 144.

“…Sims’s second patient would also die.”

SIMS, J. Marion, (1885). The Story of my Life, ed. by H. Marion-Sims. D. Appleton & Co: New York, p. 145.

“…ten dollars…”

SIMS, J. Marion, (1885). The Story of my Life, ed. by H. Marion-Sims. D. Appleton & Co: New York, p. 146.

“…a German shepherd dog…”

The Fayetteville Weekly Observer (Fayetteville, NC), September 15, 1835, p. 3.

“…threw it into a well.”

SIMS, J. Marion, (1885). The Story of my Life, ed. by H. Marion-Sims. D. Appleton & Co: New York, p. 145.

“…he would abandon medicine…”

SIMS, J. Marion, (1885). The Story of my Life, ed. by H. Marion-Sims. D. Appleton & Co: New York, pp. 145-46.

“His mind turned again…”

SIMS, J. Marion, (1885). The Story of my Life, ed. by H. Marion-Sims. D. Appleton & Co: New York, p. 146.

“…heading to Mobile…”

See “…he would further his studies…,” above.

“His friend LeVert…”

See “…planned to open a hospital…,” above. Information about LeVert is much more difficult to come by. His wife, socialite Octavia Walton LeVert, is much better recorded.

From a short description of the holdings of the LeVert family in the Manuscripts Department of the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina Library, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

“…Ward Crockett…”

Sims refers to Ward Crockett in a letter dated January 10, 1836. A selection of Sims’s letters is held in the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill libraries. Many of these letters were reproduced in an appendix of Sims’s autobiography.

SIMS, J. Marion, (1885). The Story of my Life, ed. by H. Marion-Sims. D. Appleton & Co: New York, p. 375.

“…Theresa’s brother Rush—and her mother…”

SIMS, J. Marion, (1885). The Story of my Life, ed. by H. Marion-Sims. D. Appleton & Co: New York, p. 201.

Harris, S. (1950). Woman's surgeon: The life story of J. Marion Sims. New York: Macmillan, p. 70.

 

“…the great thrust of people…”

Horsman, R. (1987). Josiah Nott of Mobile: Southerner, physician, and racial theorist. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, p. 53.

“…like a nebula…”

The Fayetteville Weekly Observer (Fayetteville, NC), September 15, 1835, p. 3.

The Weekly Mississippian (Jackson, MS), October 9, 1935, p. 3

“…like a partially opened fan.”

Clerke, A. M. (1995). A popular history of astronomy during the nineteenth century: By Agnes M. Clerke, p. 132.

“…electric or magnetic?”

The Democrat (Huntsville, AL), April 8, 1835, p. 3.

Clerke, A. M. (1995). A popular history of astronomy during the nineteenth century: By Agnes M. Clerke, p. 133.

“…Marengo County, Alabama.”

SIMS, J. Marion, (1885). The Story of my Life, ed. by H. Marion-Sims. D. Appleton & Co: New York, p. 147.

“…a three-fold preoccupation…”

Sims’s motives are inferred here. He made several statements about the stakes of sterility being higher than simply a woman’s or a couple’s ambitions to parenthood. The importance he placed on cancer and abdominal surgery is treated in much greater depth, and fully documented, later in the book. Similarly, Sims only ever performed animal experiments for other surgeons—never for his own work—and he leaped ahead to human trials with metal suture material, as will be seen, well before other doctors made it routine practice. Given that medical schools in the South were advertising the availability of deceased enslaved persons for dissection, it’s only logical that Sims’s decision to head for Alabama would have been based, in part, on the medical possibilities there.

Sims, J. M. (1990). Silver sutures in surgery; together with Clinical notes on uterine surgery. Birmingham, Ala: Classics of Obstetrics & Gynecology Library, p. 5.

“The Treatment of Gunshot-Wounds of the Abdomen in Relation to Modern Peritoneal Surgery,” British Medical Journal, December 10, 1881, p. 925.