Honoring the Black Women Who Actually Birthed Modern Gynecology
Say their names: Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsey
The 1952 painting by Robert Thom (right) will be on display at the Mothers of Gynecology Museum at 33 South Perry Street in Montgomery, Alabama until the Spring of 2026.
The “Father” of Modern Gynecology
For more than 150 years, J. Marion Sims was lauded as the father of modern gynecology. Sims was credited with pioneering a technique for correcting fistulas, an often common occurrence after childbirth. Part of his legacy includes founding New York Woman’s Hospital, the first institution dedicated exclusively to women’s health. He was also prolific in publishing his findings and practices in medical journals throughout his career.
But Sims’ career was very closely linked to the slave trade, and specifically to treating the enslaved women of wealthy plantation owners. Women’s health was generally considered “unpleasant and inappropriate,” and the symbiotic relationship between Sims and the plantation owners was focused on restoring an enslaved woman’s ability to work again after childbirth. Repairing fistulas was about retaining the “value” of the enslaved person for their “owner”, not about caring for people with health complications.
Sims honed his technique (and the creation of what would become the speculum) by experimenting on enslaved Black women without anesthesia and likely without informed consent.
Say their names
The names of the first three enslaved Black women that Sims operated on are known to history through Sims’ own notes from his time practicing in Montgomery, Alabama: Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsey.
18-year-old Lucy was his first fistula patient, and she had been suffering with urinary incontinence since giving birth months prior. Because Sims did not give Lucy anesthesia, she enduring the hour-long surgery screaming in pain on her hands and knees. She nearly died from the procedure due to blood poisoning and only recovered after months of suffering.
Betsey was from Lowndes County and was only 16 years old when she gave birth and developed a fistula. It was then that she came under the treatment of Sims and he began his experimentation on her.
Anarcha was 17-years-old at the time of her “treatment”, where she endured 30 operations over a period of three and a half years – without anesthesia. Her trauma was continually witnessed not just by the other enslaved women patients, but also by doctors learning from and being mentored by Sims. When one method of repair did not fix the fistula, Anarcha would endure surgery after surgery until finally Sims declared the thirtieth procedure successful.
Anarcha eventually became a nurse after her years of torment, and Sims would “loan” her out to treat travelers coming through the Montgomery area.
Claiming to have “perfected” his treatment of fistulas after years of torturing Anarcha, Lucy, Betsey, and other enslaved Black women, Sims moved to New York City where he eventually founded the New York Women’s Hospital. Despite killing many of his patients, both Black and white, in various surgeries over the years Sims became known as the Father of Modern Gynecology. The ethics of his treatments and withholding of anesthetic was called into question by other practitioners, even in his own time.
Lucey, Betsy, Anarcha, and the other Black women who suffered at his hand were all but forgotten to history as Sims was touted as a legend. In more recent years, Sims legacy has been revived and reviled, and a statue honoring him was removed from a park in New York City. The names of these brave women have been brought back to the fore alongside that of Henrietta Lacks.
The bodies and lives of Black women have been used without consent or adherence to a duty of care in order to build the foundation of a healthcare system that still abuses, abandons, and mistreats them to this day.
Black History Month
As a part of Black History Month, we want to take a moment to remember the three named women and the countless others who suffered at the hands of a man who was admired by the medical establishment for more than one hundred years. Sims should be left in the dustheap of history, while we raise up the names of the Black women who actually gave birth to the field of modern gynecology through their literal blood, sweat, and tears.
We acknowledge the sacrifice and pain they endured.
Learn more about Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsey
You can learn a little more about the Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsey, and one artists’ remarkable way of honoring them in this piece from PBS NewsHour:
Sources used in this post
- NPR – The Father of Gynecology Who Experimented on Slaves No Longer On Pedestal in NYC
- NIH – The Legacy of James Marion Sims | History Revisited
- History.com – The Father of Modern Gynecology Performed Shocking Experiments on Slave
- Commonwealth Fund – Reclaiming Gynecology’s Troubling Legacy
- AnarchaLucyBetsey.org
