1/12/2023 0 Comments Evil made marion![]() ![]() 9 Ojanuga and like minded critics present a picture of Sims as a cold, brutal, calculating misogynist who carried out a series of unwarranted surgical experiments on unwilling but helpless slaves in pursuit of his own self advancement. Durrenda Ojanuga-for example, writing in the Journal of Medical Ethics-has castigated Sims for achieving fame and fortune as “a result of unethical experimentation with powerless Black women” and refers to his attempts to cure vesicovaginal fistulas as “a classic example of the evils of slavery and the misuse of human subjects for medical research”. In interpreting these historical events, some modern writers have denounced Sims with the kind of righteous indignation that is usually heard only from pulpits. One young woman, a slave named Anarcha with a particularly difficult combination vesicovaginal and rectovaginal fistula, underwent 30 operations before Sims was able to close the holes in her bladder and rectum. Between late 1845 and the summer of 1849, he carried out repeated operations on these women in a dogged effort to repair their injuries. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 The primary reason for these attacks on Sims is that his initial attempts to cure vesicovaginal fistulas were carried out on a group of enslaved African American women whom he quartered in a small hospital behind his house in Montgomery, Alabama. Lauded as a conquering surgical hero in his own time and generally admired by succeeding surgeons in the decades following his death, 2 Sims's reputation diminished considerably in the mid‐twentieth century as it was assaulted by a series of strident critics who condemned him for his reputedly unethical behaviour. Attempts to cure this condition had eluded many previous generations of surgeons who had tried to repair these devastating injuries time and again, but without significant success. ![]() His rise to prominence began with his development of the first consistently successful operation for the cure of vesicovaginal fistula, a catastrophic complication of childbirth in which a hole develops between a woman's bladder and her vagina and leads to constant, unremitting, and uncontrollable urinary incontinence. J Marion Sims (1813–1883) was arguably the most famous American surgeon of the 19th century and today he is generally acknowledged as the founder of modern surgical gynaecology. ![]() Although enslaved African American women certainly represented a “vulnerable population” in the 19th century American South, the evidence suggests that Sims's original patients were willing participants in his surgical attempts to cure their affliction-a condition for which no other viable therapy existed at that time. Sims's modern critics have discounted the enormous suffering experienced by fistula victims, have ignored the controversies that surrounded the introduction of anaesthesia into surgical practice in the middle of the 19th century, and have consistently misrepresented the historical record in their attacks on Sims. This article reviews these allegations using primary historical source material and concludes that the charges that have been made against Sims are largely without merit. Numerous modern authors have attacked Sims's medical ethics, arguing that he manipulated the institution of slavery to perform ethically unacceptable human experiments on powerless, unconsenting women. The first consistently successful operation for this condition was developed by Dr J Marion Sims, an Alabama surgeon who carried out a series of experimental operations on black slave women between 18. Vesicovaginal fistula was a catastrophic complication of childbirth among 19th century American women. ![]()
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