i was reminded today of an article i read last month titled commodities and cages... i thought it fitting to share an excerpt this international womyn's day as a tribute to Betsy, Lucy, and Anarcha (and so many more) who were enslaved and brutalised in the 1800s...
"Montgomery Alabama 1846 -1853. Dr. J. Marion Sims
(1813-1883) is now known as both “The Father of Gynecology” and “The
Father of Vaginal Surgery”. Sims was born in South Carolina and
practiced there, in Alabama, New York City, and throughout France. He is
widely recognized for laying the foundations for modern gynecology,
pioneering the use of surgical steel sutures, and developing several
techniques in vaginal surgery. What is less known about Sims is “the fact that many of his accomplishments ….were obtained at the expense and the surgical exploitation of Black women”.
While
Sims went to some length to hide his use of slave subjects, featuring
white women in anatomy articles and texts, his primary research subjects
were three female slaves – Betsy, Lucy, and Anarcha. He
operated on each of these women as many as 30 times without anesthesia,
believing that blacks did not have the same capacity for pain as
whites. Sims even went so far as to purchase Anarcha in order to
continue operating on her. In addition, he addicted all these women to
opiates in order to facilitate their post-operative recovery and
expedite another round of surgeries.
After moving to New York in 1853, Sims continued his exploitation of
poor and African American women, exposing them to dangerous experimental
surgeries at the Women’s Hospital of New York City. Describing the
death of an African American woman after such a surgery, MacGregor
(1998) writes:
“Clearly from Sims’ point of view, the life of the patient in this case was expendable. Her body in many ways had become his even before she died… While he placed his findings at the altar of science, her class and her race placed her at Sims’ disposal.”
Because these women were deemed less than human.
They were only animals, and above all, they were property."
their story is one of many echoes from the herstory of slavery, a reflection of the enslavement that exists today, those subjugated and brutalised now our sisters (and brothers) of other nations, other tribes - "because they are deemed less than human... they are only animals, and above all, they are property' ... you can read the full article "commodities and cages" on vine sanctuary's website...
