| Origin of Gynecology
"As slavery in America approached the mid-nineteenth century, the twilight years of physical bondage, many new developments were taking place. The need for slave-owners to maximize the investments in their women breeders was becoming of paramount importance. Due to incompetent White physicians on plantations, countless women were mutilated in childbrith from a condition known as vesicovaginal fistula, an opening between the bladder and the vagina that occurs as the result of instrument damage sustained by the woman during deliver. Those that did not die were rendered infertile, making them worthless as breeders.
One physician, Dr. James Marion Sims, decided to rectify what was fast becoming an economic calamity. Sims became interested in a particular woman named Anarcha, who developed a vesicovaginal fistula while Sims was delivering her child. Since she was no longer valued as a breeder, Sims decided to experiment on this woman to discover a surgical remedy for the condition. He built a hospital/laboratory and secured the service of an unused jailhouse in which Anarcha and several other Black women were detained for surgical exploration. Between 1845 and 1849, Sims performed hundreds of operations on these women and others, exploring various techniques to close their fistulas. 'Sims made them his guinea pigs, performing hundreds of experimental and exploratory operations on them until they died off one by one and were replaced by fresh victims.' Sims performed all of his operations without the use of anesthetics, keeping t he women heavily dosed with opium to combat resistance and struggle. In effect, Sims finally perfected the procedure, curing vesicovaginal fistula during his thirtieth operation on Anarcha.
Dr. Sims went on to perform thousands of such operations on innumerable Black women. Surgical procedures such as clitorindectomies and ovariotomies were most common. At the end of Sim's career, he was honored as the 'father of gynecology.' When he died, the Journal of the American Medical Association declared, 'His memory the whole profession loves to honor, for by his genius and devotion to medical science he advanced it in its resources to relieve human suffering as much, if not more, than any man who has lived within this century.'"
Wayne B. Chandler
Ancient Future
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AK |