Page 82
“…contracted syphilis in 1840.”
The entire early history of Sam’s case was related by Mosely himself.
“Osteo-Sarcoma of the Lower Jaw—Resection of the Body of the Bone—Cure,” J. Marion Sims, The American Journal of the Medical Sciences, Vol. 11, 1846, p. 128.
“Mosely was left in a bind.”
Based on his appearance and clothes—the image of Sam in the printed book appears in the same article in which Sims detailed the case, on p. 128—I have assumed that Sam was a house servant. Mosely does not speak to his motives in seeking a cure for Sam, but I am relying here on a statement about plantation owners’ motives in the health of enslaved people offered by Sims’s friend, Josiah Nott, included in a much more recent social history that was part of a presidential commission report on medical ethics.
“Osteo-Sarcoma of the Lower Jaw—Resection of the Body of the Bone—Cure,” J. Marion Sims, The American Journal of the Medical Sciences, Vol. 11, 1846, p. 128.
“The Patient’s Role in Medical Decisionmaking: A Social History of Informed Consent in Medical Therapy,” Martin S. Pernick, included in: United States. (1982). Making health care decisions: A report on the ethical and legal implications of informed consent in the patient-practitioner relationship. Washington, D.C: President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research, Appendix E, p. 19.
“Mosely recalled hearing of another young surgeon…”
Mosely does not express how he became aware of Sims—I have included here two of the more prominent episodes from Sims’s autobiography, the overseer already alluded to (See “…two quarts of pus squirted…,” above), and the woman from Hayneville, which appears later in the book.