fact-checking

Fact check: Father of modern gynecology performed experiments on enslaved Black women

USA TODAY

A statue of J. Marion Sims is moved after being taken off its pedestal.

The claim: The “father of modern gynecology” J. Marion Sims performed experiments on Black female slaves without anesthesia

A statue of J. Marion Sims stood across from the New York Academy of Medicine in Central Park from the 1890s until 2018. Sims, known as the “father of modern gynecology,” contributed revolutionary tools and techniques to the medical field, like the modern-day speculum and the Sims position. His breakthroughs emerged from experiments on enslaved Black women without the use of anesthesia.

A Facebook post from 2017 depicts a group of women standing in front of the Sims statue in Central Park, robed in hospital gowns splattered with red paint. The activists from Black Youth Project 100 demanded that the statue of Sims be removed.

On April 17, 2018, the statue came down after New York City’s Public Design Commission voted unanimously to do so, and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered its removal.

Other viral social media posts point to a portrait of Sims and a Black patient. The caption says: "After perfecting the techniques on black enslaved woman with out anesthesia in America, Sims went on to offer the procedure in Europe to wealthy white women who were sedated. This man is arguably the most famous American surgeon of the 19th century. I see him no different than Josef Megele (sic) both pure monsters."

Josef Mengele was a Nazi SS physician who "conducted inhumane medical experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz," according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Are these allegations true?

Sims: His life and controversial research

Sims (1813-83) earned his medical degree from Philadelphia's Jefferson Medical College and, according to the Encyclopedia of Alabama, practiced medicine in Alabama from 1835 to 49.

His crowning medical achievements include perfecting the method for repairing vesicovaginal fistula. In addition, he is credited with the “first successful gallbladder surgery and the first successful artificial insemination,” according to the Washington Post.

But his controversial methods have shrouded his reputation. Vanessa Northington Gamble, a professor at George Washington University, said that between 1846 and 1849, Sims operated on at least 10 enslaved women without anesthesia. One enslaved woman, Anarcha, endured at least 30 painful surgeries. Gamble said that after he practiced his methods on Black women, Sims moved to New York City to open a women’s hospital in the 1850s. He started treating white women, but with anesthesia.

Some in the medical field have defended Sims, his methods and his discoveries. In the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Irwin H. Kaiser called Sims a “product of his era.” For medical historians like Gamble, the consent (or lack thereof) of the enslaved women subjected to these painful experiments must be considered.

“These women were property. These women could not consent,” she said. “These women also had value to the slaveholders for production and reproduction –– how much work they could do in the field, how many enslaved children they could produce.”

In addition to the Central Park statue, a painting at the University of Alabama at Birmingham came down in 2006 and an endowed chair honoring him at the Medical University of South Carolina was renamed in 2018, according to The Atlantic.

The portrait mentioned in some posts is by Robert Thom as part of a series of portraits, "Great Moments in Medicine," that was commissioned by pharmaceutical firm Parke Davis, according to the American Historical Association. An article from the AHA noted: "Vibrant copies of these portraits were sent out by the millions to doctor’s offices across the country between 1948 and 1961."

The paintings are part of the collection at the University of Michigan Museum of Art, a gift from Pfizer, which owns Parke Davis.

'Black women don't feel pain.' Did Sims say this?

Gamble wrote for the American Journal of Public Health that Sims only began to use anesthesia in his procedures with white women, after he had already experimented with the bodies of Black women. Some experts, like L.L. Wall at Washington University in St. Louis, defend his practices for his time period. Wall wrote that critics of Sims tend to overlook the “controversies that surrounded the introduction of anaesthesia into surgical practice in the middle of the 19th century.”

However, according to Brynn Holland at History.com, “Sims’s decision to not use (anesthesia) — or any other numbing technique — was based on his misguided belief that Black people didn’t experience pain like white people did.” In addition, Holland reported that Sims had warped ideas about developmental differences between African Americans and white people; namely, that African American “skulls grew too quickly around their brain,” making them less intelligent.

While the statement “Black women don’t feel pain” included in one Facebook post does not appear to be a verbatim quote from Sims, a number of sources support that he espoused this belief. Diana E. Alexson wrote that “Sims failed utterly to recognise his patients as autonomous persons” in her study, “Women as Victims of Medical Experimentation: J. Marion Sims' Surgery on Slave Women, 1845-1850.”

Our rating: True

Though the direct quote in the Facebook post –– “Black women don’t feel pain” –– does not appear verbatim in reports about J. Marion Sims, this certainly reflects Sims’ established beliefs, which have been studied and supported by numerous researchers. The facts presented in the posts about Sims and the conditions of his research are TRUE.

Our fact-checked sources:

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