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“…his greatest critics were his assistants…”
The criticisms of Sims’s assistants Nathan Bozeman and Thomas Addis Emmet, from Alabama and New York, respectively, are described in full and fully documented in later chapters. Other prominent critics of Sims included Dr. Eugene Tilt, Dr. Emil Noeggerath, Dr. Moritz Schuppert, and Dr. A. Reeves Jackson, and many others.
“… ‘savior of women.’”
From a few years later, but one of many examples. This piece is actually muted, in comparison, to some others. The criticisms of Sims’s assistants Nathan Bozeman and Thomas Addis Emmet, from Alabama and New York, respectively, are described in full and fully documented in later chapters. Other prominent critics of Sims included Dr. Eugene Tilt, Dr. Emil Noeggerath, Dr. Moritz Schuppert, and Dr. A. Reeves Jackson, and many others.
“Savior of Women,” unsigned, M.D., June 1963, p. 159.
“It wasn’t until the late 1960s…”
I believe that it is G.J. Barker-Benfield’s book, The Horrors of the Half-Known Life, that ignites the reexamination of Sims’s career that has trickled down to today. Barker-Benfield is one of the first critical treatments of Sims published in book form (Sims is critiqued, along with two other nineteenth century figures), and was first published in 1968, two decades after Seale Harris’s hagiographic biography, Woman’s Surgeon. The book has been through several editions—the author told me that it began as his dissertation, earlier in the 1960s.
Barker-Benfield, G. J. (1976). The horrors of the half-known life: Aspects of the exploitation of women by men. Los Angeles.
Hallman, J.C., “Monumental Error,” Harper’s Magazine, November 2017, p. 30.
“Activists, scholars, historians…”
A woefully incomplete list of the scholarship, history, and art that has taken aim at Sims’s legacy includes: nonfiction books by G.J. Barker-Benfield (The Horrors of the Half-Known Life), Deborah Kuhn McGregor (From Midwives to Medicine), Harriet Washington (Medical Apartheid), and Deirdre Cooper Owens (Medical Bondage); books of poetry by Bettina Judd (Patient) and Dominique Christina (Anarcha Speaks) and Kwoya Fagin Maples (Mend); The Anarcha Project, a collaborative performance project held at the University of Michigan; plays by playwrights Charly Evon Simpson (Behind the Sheet) and Anyika McMillan-Herod (Do No Harm); art installations of sculptor Doreen Garner, paintings by Jules Arthur, and multimedia wall-hangings of Michelle Hartney; and academic symposiums sponsored by the CUNY Graduate Center and the Resilient Sisterhood Project at Wellesley College.
By far, the most far-ranging of these efforts is the “Mothers of Gynecology” sculpture, by artist Michelle Browder of Montgomery, Alabama, who has also created the Mothers of Gynecology Park, also in Montgomery, as part of an ongoing and still-growing More Up Campus. The More Up Campus helped to facilitate the recognition of “Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsey Days,” celebrated February 28-March 1, in Alabama and in Connecticut, thanks in no small part to the efforts of Dr. Veronica Pimentel.
footnote* “The author of Sims’s only full-length biography…”
Harris, S. (1950). Woman's surgeon: The life story of J. Marion Sims. New York: Macmillan, p. 99.
footnote† “… ‘American Mengele’…”
“American Mengele,” Singer, A, Huffington Post, September 16, 2011.
“…remained in queue for publication…”
Hallman, J.C., “Monumental Error,” Harper’s Magazine, November 2017.
“…a ninety-day commission…”
Of many, many examples, see, for example, “Panel Will Devise Guidelines for Addressing Monuments Deemed Offensive,” William Neuman, New York Times, September 8, 2017, and “New York City’s Controversial Monuments Will Remain, But Their Meaning Will Be More Complicated,” Jelani Cobb, The New Yorker, January 12, 2018.
