New York Removes Statue Of 'Father Of Gynecology' Who Experimented On Black Women Without Anesthesia

Furious row after New York removes statue of 'father of gynecology' who experimented on black women without anesthesia (but actually just moves it out of sight)

• Dr James Marion Sims invented the speculum which offered the first deep look inside women for gynecologists
• However, he achieved this through deeply unethical and exploitative tests on black women
• Only three of his dozen slaves are named, Betsey, Lucy and Anarcha; he operated on them without anesthesia while his white patients were medicated
• On Tuesday, New York City moved a 14-foot statue of Dr Sims, deeming it a 'symbol of hate', relocating it to his grave in Brooklyn
• Activists who led the campaign to remove it said it was a 'slap in the face' to move it instead of destroying it

A statue of Dr James Marion Sims, the 'father of gynecology' who experimented on black women without anesthesia, has been removed from New York's Central Park.

However, activists who have campaigned for years to take down the statue said it was a 'slap in the face' to relocate the 14-foot bronze figure to Sims' grave in Brooklyn instead of destroying it.

Sims has to this day been held up as a pioneer in the field of women's health, with statues in New York, Pennsylvania and his home state of South Carolina, despite performing brutal operations on slave women without pain relief.

Through his callous techniques, he invented the vaginal speculum, which is still used in gynecological examinations, as well as a way to fix a tear between the uterus and bladder during childbirth.

After years of protests, a recent review by New York officials of the city's monuments deemed the Sims statue in Harlem to be a 'symbol of hate'.

Today at 8am, activists declared 'there is a difference between history and memorializing' as they put a noose and hood over the head of the 14-foot bronze figure, before moving it to Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn where Sims is buried.

Plans are under way to replace the statue with a plaque dedicated to Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsey, the three black slave women who Sims stripped and tortured to test his theories, while his white female patients were allowed painkillers beforehand.

Nonetheless, the move has sparked controversy as some are still calling for it to be destroyed.




Dr James Marion Sims invented the speculum which offered the first deep look inside women for gynecologists. As a result he was commemorated in a statue in New York's Central Park




On Tuesday, New York City removed a 14-foot statue of Dr Sims, deeming it a 'symbol of hate'



Only three of Sims' dozen slaves are named, Betsey, Lucy and Anarcha; he operated on them without anesthesia while his white patients were medicated. Pictured: an activist at the removal on Tuesday

East Harlem Preservation, the group that spearheaded the campaign to remove the statue, said on Tuesday that as long as the statue exists, Sims is still being commemorated.

'Dr Sims is not our hero, and we don't need any reminders of his barbarities. We bear the pain and burden of intergenerational trauma every day,' the group said.

'The symbolic "move" was seen as a slap in the face by many who had for years maintained that the statue's presence did a huge disservice to the neighborhood's majority Black and Latino residents—groups that have historically been subjected to medical experiments without permission or regard for their wellbeing.'

Speaking to Daily Mail Online, Susan M Reverby, a medical historian who is Professor Emerita of Women's and Gender Studies at Wellesely College and has been vocal in the campaign to alter or remove the statue, said she condemns the statue but accepts the decision to move it rather than destroy it.

'We don't live in Stalin-era Soviet Union where things would be destroyed,' Reverby said.

'I agree with the American Historical Society that there is a difference between history and memorializing. No one is denying the history of what he did, but just that we as a society have decided what we are memorializing and what we are not.'

Instead, she believes we should focus on remembering the women he hurt.

The removal, Reverby said, 'reinforces a growing awareness over the last half century of women patients and what they put up with. They shouldn't just be nameless faces. We should be remembering them, the women who were used and suffered.'

The Sims statue, which stood on 5th Avenue at 103rd Street, was the first ever erected for a doctor in America. It was made in 1894 and in 1934 moved to the edge of Central Park, near where Sims spent the final years of his life.

South Carolina-born Sims started his career in Montgomery, Alabama, where he was a slave owner and trained doctor.

Early on in his career, he started to notice that many slave women suffered a specific kind of tear between the uterus and bladder (vesico-vaginal fistula) during childbirth, largely because of forced rape and teen pregnancy.



The 14-foot bronze figure will be moved to Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, where Sims is buried



The Sims statue, which stood on 5th Avenue at 103rd Street, was the first ever erected for a doctor in America



In his autobiography, The Story Of My Life, Sims claimed women were clamoring to be operated on by him. However, there is no indication that they consented to the fiercely unethical manner in which he went about treating them

He decided to embark on a series of exploitative experiments that even his doctor peers in the pro-slavery south found to be too extreme.

In his autobiography, The Story Of My Life, Sims claimed women were clamoring to be operated on by him. However, there is no indication that they consented to the fiercely unethical manner in which he went about treating them.

At his hospital, in the center of the neighborhood where slaves were traded, Sims pitted himself as the go-to slave healer for all kinds of ailments.

Meanwhile, he used 12 black women (all anonymous bar Anarcha, Lucy and Betsey) as experiments to trial new surgical techniques - and to test the theory widely held among white physicians that black women did not feel pain as much as white people.

Sims proudly described his experiments: he cut Anarcha 13 times before he could achieve the results he was aiming for; Lucy, he admits, was in 'extreme' agony.

This all happened before 1853, when he had earned a name for himself as the 'father of modern gynecology' and moved to New York City to become a celebrity doctor, treating royals and A-listers who came in from all over the world.

It was only in the 1960s that feminist texts began to question his adoration.



Sims decided to embark on a series of exploitative experiments that even his doctor peers in the pro-slavery south found to be too extreme



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