Enslaved Black women were used for "medical research" prior to the Civil War

Get the Point!

Even the most casual student of history knows that during the period of American slavery from 1619 to 1865, that white men could rape and even kill enslaved Black women with impunity. But what is rarely taught in schools is that the roots of modern gynecology owe a unpayable debt to enslaved Black women—women who were often experimented on by “medical professionals.”

Real American History

Specifically, Dr. James Marion Sims, lauded broadly as "The Father of Modern Gynecology," was experimenting on enslaved Black women long before infamous Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele would become the poster child for similarly gruesome acts on Jewish women during the Holocaust!

“Dr.” James Sims

Dr. Sims's barbarity included cutting Black women open without anesthesia, as the popular myth at the time was that Black women, being inferior "animals," were impervious to pain. 

Dr. Sims compelled his Black "patients" to get undressed before beginning his operations and after they were disrobed, Sims forced them to perch on their knees and bend forward onto their elbows so that their heads rested on their hands; Sims claimed to prefer this position so that he could "see" the depths of their private regions easily, and probe them with his fingers and other instruments at will—sometimes for hours at the time.

Dr. Sims' most significant “work” was the development of a surgical technique for the repair of vesicovaginal fistula, a severe complication in which urine from the bladder seeps continuously into the vaginal tract, thus obstructing childbirth. Many of the Southern slaveowners who provided Black women for these ghastly experiments did so out of their desire to prevent Black women from having any difficulties in bearing more children—children who could be sold for profit.

The experiments were painful, as Dr. Sims noted himself, saying about one enslaved woman: "Lucy’s agony was extreme; I thought she was going to die…it took several months for her to recover."

Right….

Only after Sims's technique was perfected on Black women who could not consent to the same was it ever deemed safe to treat white women who, as you might figure, were given proper anesthesia to numb any pains. And lest we forget that the reason that our enslaved grandmothers and aunts were treated with such inhumane disrespect was because Dr. Sims and his ilk considered them chattel property that were no higher in life form than horses, mules, or dogs...