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ANARCHA'S SPECULUM
From the years 1845-1849, developments in gynecology were made in Montgomery, Alabama, by the man who is now titled “The Father of Modern Gynecology,” Dr. James Marion Sims. His interest in developing the field began when a white woman by the name of Mrs. Merrill experienced pelvic pain after she had fallen off of a horse. Sims was able to gain a better view of her vaginal wall and dilate her vagina after inserting his fingers.
Following this event, Sims purchased enslaved women and worked on enslaved African American women who were brought by their owners, that had vesicovaginal fistulae. These fistulae were tears in the vaginal wall that lead to issues such as urinary incontinence, and resulted from labor complications that were particularly common among enslaved women, as they had poor nutrition, no access to prenatal care, and were often forced to conceive children at young ages. Anarcha, Betsy, and Lucy were a few of the enslaved women that underwent back-to-back nonconsensual experimental procedures in Sims’s care, in attempt to repair their fistulae. Anarcha alone endured at least thirteen operations. Sims attempted these repairs after he found that inserting the handle of a bent pewter spoon into the vaginas of these women while on their knees and elbows on the table, increased the visibility of the fistulae, ultimately leading to successful repair of the vesicovaginal fistula. Though he had created and used this crude model of the modern Sim’s speculum, his many operations were unsuccessful. Sims also attempted to repair the fistulae of white women, but proceeded to only to experiment on enslaved women, as their white counterparts could not handle the pain.
The beliefs during this time were that African American women had extremely high pain tolerances, this led to these women being forced to bear their bodies on the surgical table multiple times, act as nurses for procedures done on other enslaved women, and conduct their regular slave duties, all with no anesthesia or pain medications. Once he perfected his methods, Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsy were a few of the enslaved women that were able to have their vesicovaginal fistulae repaired. Sims went on to open a hospital in New York, after he had perfected his methods through the use of slaves. Here, he would successfully perform the procedure, with anesthesia, on white women using the Sim’s speculum and his statue would eventually become erect in honor of his contributions to medicine. This statue would later be protested against due to his experimental procedures on enslaved women, and eventually taken down and relocated. The Sim’s speculum is used in pelvic exams to this day.
Sources:
Axelsen, Diana E. “Women as Victims of Medical Experimentation: J. Marion Sims' Surgery on Slave Women, 1845-1850.” Sage (Atlanta, Ga.), U.S. National Library of Medicine, 1985, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11645827.
McGregor, Deborah Kuhn. From Midwives to Medicine: the Birth of American Gynecology. Rutgers University Press, 1998.
Sims, J., & Marion-Sims, H. (1885). The story of my life. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.hc1hb9
Ojanuga, D. (1993). The medical ethics of the “father of gynaecology”, Dr J Marion Sims. Journal of Medical Ethics, 19(1), 28–31. https://doi.org/10.1136/jme.19.1.28
Penrose, C. B. (1908). The Cervix Uteri Exposed with the Sims Speculum. A Text-book of Diseases of Women [Sixth Edition, Revised].
Penrose, C. B. (1908). Sim’s Speculum. A Text-book of Diseases of Women [Sixth Edition, Revised].
Robert Thom, “Illustration of Dr. J. Marion Sims with Anarcha.” Young American Republic, accessed April 25, 2020, http://projects.leadr.msu.edu/youngamerica/items/show/123.
Ray, E., Slattery, D., & Simmons, H. (2017). From left to right: Darializa Auila-Chevalier, 23 ,Jewel Cadet, 29, Rossanna Mercedes 27, Alexis Yeboah-Kodie, 23, and Jamilah Felix, 21, demand the removal of a statue of Dr. J. Marion Sims from Central Park. photograph, New York. Retrieved from https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/manhattan/protesters-slam-nyc-statue-doctor-experimented-slaves-article-1.3426690