The Mothers of Gynecology

By Melissa Monroe

I bet you have never heard of the names Anarcha, Lucy and Betsey in the history books. But I’m damn sure the name Dr. J. Marion Sims has been put on a pedestal, especially in medical journals. 

Black women, in particular, should get free gynecological healthcare because these three Black Queens, let me say their names again – Anarcha, Lucy and Betsey –  unwillingly were tortured by Dr. Sims in the name of medicine. In the 1840s, he took Anarcha, Lucy and Betsey from their slave plantations to experiment with them WITHOUT anesthesia. They all suffered from a condition called fistula, which were unhealed tears in their vagina and rectum/anal area, often from childbirth. Anarcha first came to the doctor because she couldn’t deliver her baby after three days of labor. After her baby was stillborn, she developed fistulas, and he claimed he could “heal” her. In three and half years, he performed 30 procedures on her.

Lucy and Betsey were also his “patients,” and several other women. He said he was able to cure the women of their injuries by using silver thread and a “clamp suture” mechanism that would soon be abandoned. The doctor eventually relocated to New York City to capitalize on his methods and tools (he developed the precursor to the speculum in his experiments). And a decade later, he’s coined the “Father of Gynecology.”

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