Father of gynecology

Do you know him?

Dr Sims was the first physician to actually view the genitalia of his women patients. The morals of the time allowed a physician to palpate the area only. However, propriety went out the window when working on slave women, so he examined them while they kneeled on all fours, up on his examination table. He used, according to some accounts, a modified shoehorn as a speculum. He operated without the aid of anesthesia. Most of his patients used for his experiments died nameless and faceless, many of them suffering for weeks before being relieved by death. Those who survived became addicted to the drugs Sims furnished them to keep their groans and moans to a minimum. The slave women of the time left no written record of their torture, since reading or writing was punishable by death if you were a Negro slave.

One of his patients, a slave by the name of Anarcha, underwent 34 experimental operations on Sims’s table.

http://www.nathanielturner.com/anarchas_story.htm

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/479892_2

http://www.wholewoman.com/drupal-6.16/node/2961 this is also interesting story about that man

[quote author=Marinus link=topic=56766.msg379952#msg379952 date=1314726497]

Dr Sims was the first physician to actually view the genitalia of his women patients. http://www.nathanielturner.com/anarchas_story.htm http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/479892_2

[/quote]

No offense, but I am very certain that physicians throughout the ages, going back to Classical Antiquity and beyond, had no qualms about viewing female genitalia ...Dr. Sims was certainly not the first, not even in modern times.

I also fear that the account you give of Dr. Sims career is an abbreviated and slanted uncharitable version, more suited to a Hollywood horror movie than anything historical.

Ty putting things into context. Pre-Civil War surgery for instance, on just about anyone at all, was done without anesthesia since it had only recently been discovered.

Joseph Priestley discovered Nitrous oxide in the 1770s. He is the father of modern anesthesia. By modern anesthesia, I mean putting the patient out other than by getting them drunk, which was the method since antiquity.

Sims is considered to be the father of gynecology and gynecological surgery.

agracier is correct, men have seen women naked and have done exams on them since the beginning of time.

I think we might say that Dr. Sims is the father of "modern" gynecology and made some pioneering advances in the field.

A great chapter is devoted to him in "Get Me Out: a history of childbirth. (2010) by Randi Hutter Epstein, MD and I feel the need to defend him because he is a son of my own great state of SC.

"many of them suffering for weeks before being relieved by death." Sorry, I must take exception to the use of this phrase. Most, if not all of these women were suffering from vesicovaginal fistulas and would have died in torment anyway. Many women who had these fistula (usually from pushing during labor) committed suicide later because of the embarrassment brought on by their condition. Is it not better that Dr. Sims was able to develop a surgical correction still used today? Yes, many of his patients died, but given morphine, laudanum, ether and chloroform, they died in less pain than they would have otherwise. Yes, they were slaves, because women of social stature would not have allowed themselves to be touched or viewed in such a manner. These sisters are perhaps the true heroines of gynecological surgery.

Marinus could perhaps do a little more thorough study of the subject before diving in head first, as it were.

The great book, "Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth" is an excellent read. I would highly recommend it to all of those with a medical interest. Dr. Sims is covered in detail in the book.

I also saw an exhibit on Dr. Sims in the Science Museum in London last year. He is indeed the father of modern gynecology.

Lady Teddy, who loves to read and to travel