Prior to Graham Barker-Benfield’s publication in 1976, the majority of our knowledge of J. Marion Sim’s “ethics” came from Seale Harris, who published the surgeon’s biography in 1950. Harris’ main offenses were strongly exaggerating both the severity of the women’s condition and their willingness to participate in the Sim’s surgeries. Naturally the public would know little about vesico-vaginal fistulas. Therefore we cannot chastise the audience for not knowing whether Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsy were indeed in so much pain before Sim’s heroic surgeries that they “lived on year after year in misery and ostracism wishing for death” (p. 11). However, I am astounded that the 20th century public was so disillusioned as to believe that Sim’s procedures on slave women were wanted, voluntary, or consensual—especially after Harris’s description of the invasiveness, lack of anesthesia, and shear volume of surgeries that these women suffered.
I was therefore shocked that Sim’s work was celebrated without question until 1976. Given Harris’s accounts, why did Sim’s surgeries remain unexamined for so long? After some thought, I realized that the ethics of any “father,” in this case the “father of American gynecology” are always golden by default. Our culture’s “fathers” remain innocent until proven guilty—which rarely happens. We are taught to assume that groundbreaking medical procedures are simply “discovered.” The ethical background of Western medicine usually remains unquestioned and is known only to the select few that care to pry. After all, if we take too close of a look at Western medicine, we might debunk the golden ethics of all our scientific “fathers,” leaving our textbooks devoid of objective science. Rather, America prefers to keep its proverbial head in the ground when it comes to medical history, especially in regards to women and minorities.
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I was also very shocked after reading Axelsen's essay. I find it unbelievable that no one thought to question the validity of Sim's findings, and furthermore, how he came to his conclusions. Although people may have claimed that they believed the procedures were only conducted after the women had agreed to participate, I do not think that everyone could be that unaware of what was truly happening. If anything, they knew that the women did not volunteer to be tested on, but were too afraid to say anything. Even though the procedures that Sim conducted were new in the area of western medicine, I am sure that the public was aware of the pain and the risk of other complications that could have resulted from such surgeries.
I, too, was shocked with the initial praise of Sim's work, and it upset me that Axelsen's tone throughout the first half of the article also seemed to praise him. When giving Sim's introduction, she made it seem like you couldn't say a bad word about the man, however when reading that he performed unnecessary surgeries on female slaves, most of which were unsuccessful until the THIRTEENTH attempt on Anarcha, I was pretty upset by that. For all that he's done for the field of gynecology, which coming up with the speculum, those are great things. However, when you disregard anesthesia simply because the women seem like they can endure it? That's messed up on so many levels. I guess even when you can do something great, like he ultimately did, you'll make several mistakes along the way. Hopefully our mistakes won't be that serious.
I agree with both the post and the other comments about this essay. I think that it is ridiculous that no one would check up on Sim's to make sure that he indeed was doing his job in order to help the women while making it less painful. With the discovery of anesthesia, one would think that in order to advance his practice, Sim's would have started to use it as well. Especially after women of status asked if they could drink or smoke opium before the procedure to lessen the pain. Sim's personal beliefs that women can endure pain because of their ability to give birth angers me. If Sim's was truly the respectable doctor that he made himself out to be then he certainly would have gone ahead and accomodated him patients to make them most comfortable with the invasive procedure he would perform.
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