Title: Dr. James Marion Sims and nurse repairing a vesico-vaginal fistula patient. From Henry Savage, The Surgery, Surgical Pathology, and Surgical Anatomy of the Female Pelvic Organs, in a Series of Coloured Plates Taken from Nature. With Commentaries, Notes, and Cases. Second Edition. London, John Churchill & Sons, 1870. Hand-coloured lithograph, Folio – leaf: 313 x 240 mm.
Artist/Maker: J.B. Léveillé
Date: 1870
Source: Hagströmer Medico-Historical Library
Copyright/Permissions: Hagströmer Medico-Historical Library, Karolinska Institutet
References: Owens, Deirdre Cooper. Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and The Origins of American Gynecology. Athens, GA: UGA Press, 2017.
Location(s): Montgomery, Alabama, USA; London, England
Commentary: U.S. physician James Marion Sims (1813-1883) experimented on enslaved Black women such as Anarcha, Betsy, and Lucy, operating on them without anesthesia to develop various gynecological procedures (including a treatment for vesicovaginal fistula). Taken from a 19th century medical text, this image depicts Sim’s female patient as white, erasing Sims’s exploitation of Black women and the key role they were forced to play in the founding of modern gynecological medicine.