Painting of J. Marion Sims, "the father of modern gynecology" with his test subject, Anarcha Westcott, an enslaved woman who was forced to endure extreme pain as Sims operated on her without anesthesia.
Long before Nazi Germany’s Josef Mengele conducted human experiments on Jews at Birkenau and Auschwitz, in the 19th century US J. Marion Sims purchased enslaved Black women and used them as guinea pigs for his untested surgical experiments. He repeatedly performed genital surgery on Black women without anesthesia because he assumed that they didn't feel pain. He described the experimental surgeries on his enslaved subjects as “so painful, that none but a woman could have borne them."
Anarcha Westcott was forced to regularly undergo surgical experiments while positioned on Sims' table, squatting on all fours and fully awake without the comfort of any anesthesia. Sims performed at least 30 experimental operations on Anarcha Westcott between 1845 - 1849. These operations helped Sims hone his techniques and create his gynecological tools.
After his experiments Sims founded the first women's hospital where he treated the white and wealthy.
Despite his inhumane tests on Black women, Sims is celebrated as “the father of modern gynecology”, and his statue stood right outside of the New York Academy of Medicine before protests led to it being removed. There are still statues of Sims standing at the Alabama State Capitol and outside the State House in South Carolina.
The racist idea that Black people, especially women, feel less pain than white people persists to this day in the medical community.
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