Page 93
“Yet the forceps…”
Sims’s later colleague, Fordyce Barker, wrote on the question of obstetric forceps, and consulted Sims in regard to the implement’s use. It’s yet another example of Sims managing to control his own narrative.
Barker, F. (1858). On the comparative use of ergot and the forceps in labor. Place of publication not identified: publisher not identified, pp. 15-16.
“On the Treatment of Vesico-Vaginal Fistula,” J. Marion Sims, The American Journal of the Medical Sciences, Vol. XXIII, 1852, p. 59.
“Most often the accident…”
My description of fistula here is based on extensive study of a wide variety of sources, both modern and contemporary with Sims. I am very grateful to Dr. Lewis Wall and Dr. Ene George for their advice throughout the writing of the book, and for their careful reads of early versions of the manuscript to ensure that the medicine is as accurate as possible.
“There had been occasional cures.”
Sims discussed the work of a wide variety of physicians who had worked on fistula, or had been effective in treating it. He did not, in this essay, make specific reference to Gosset, but given the fact that he had studied the subject in depth, I think it’s very unlikely that he would have been unaware of him. Sims would have had a motive to leave him out of his first publication on the subject; however, Gosset’s cure in 1834 (published in The Lancet) was practically identical to Sims’s in 1849. The only difference was Sims’s clamp suture, which turned out to be unnecessary to the cure. My emphasis here on Sims thinking of the work of other doctors in terms of devices reflects the fact that Sims struggled for years to argue that the clamp suture was the true cure—and it wasn’t.
“On the Treatment of Vesico-Vaginal Fistula,” J. Marion Sims, The American Journal of the Medical Sciences, Vol. XXIII, 1852, pp. 60-65.
“…the first case that Sims had ever seen.”
SIMS, J. Marion, (1885). The Story of my Life, ed. by H. Marion-Sims. D. Appleton & Co: New York, p. 228.
“…he hated it.”
Sims’s claims of ambivalence toward women’s health was part of how he made his meteoric rise through the profession look accidental—what is odd is why the terms of his distaste are presented in extreme terms. Some commentators have assumed underlying Freudian issues. I’m not a Freudian. I suspect Sims was trying to distinguish himself from gynecology even as he was content to be thought of as its father. He was always striving, however, to be thought of as more than just a doctor of women.
SIMS, J. Marion, (1885). The Story of my Life, ed. by H. Marion-Sims. D. Appleton & Co: New York, p. 231.
Sims, J. M., & New York Academy of Medicine. (1858). Silver sutures in surgery. New York: S.S. & W. Wood, p. 47.
“…her value as a slave was ruined.”
At this point, William R. Westcott, Anarcha’s owner, was twenty-three years old. Sims does not remark on his youth—only six years Anarcha’s senior. Sims never comments on who the father of Anarcha’s child might have been. He doesn’t address, either, why Westcott would have been interested in a cure.
SIMS, J. Marion, (1885). The Story of my Life, ed. by H. Marion-Sims. D. Appleton & Co: New York, pp. 227-28.
