Medical Bondage

In Central Park, there used to be a statue of J. Marion Sims, the so-called “father of gynecology.” Mercifully, it was removed in 2018, but the memory of his and other white doctor’s butchery on the bodies of several enslaved women isn’t so easily erased.

This book uncovers how Sims performed experimental (and anesthetized) cesarean sections, ovariotomies, and obstetric fistula repairs primarily on powerless Black women and scores of poor Irish women. In turn, those medical “breakthroughs,” which were medical experimentations, were used to benefit middle–and upper-class white women’s reproductive lives. While properly eviscerating Sims, Owens also highlights the medical… show more.

Did you know that the supposed ‘father of gynecology’ built his practice on horrific medical experiments conducted on African-American and Irish women? Owens’ book exposes how J. Marion Sims’ practice amongst relatively elite white women was built upon procedures that he developed through experimentation on Black and Irish women’s bodies, and particularly a series of experimental surgeries to repair African-American women’s fistulas, which were painful and debilitating tears between the vagina and the bladder or anus that developed during childbirth. Cooper makes a crucial and revealing methodological move by recovering and reframing the lives of the women who were objectified… show more.

Remember when the statute of Dr. J. Marion Sims was removed from Central Park a few years ago? Cooper Owens's book provides the back story: Sims's brutal, racist practices as a developer of gynecology and the equally horrible work of his many colleagues, who invented gynecology as a medical specialty, using the bodies of enslaved women in the 19th century South. Once these white, medical men perfected their techniques, they turned away from their Black "guinea pigs" and offered their new skills to white women who could pay and whose bodies and children were of value to the nation, according… show more.