Medical Experiments On Enslaved Women: A Summary

Dr. Sims’ cunningness misleads the medical field, in his articles and public presentation in the North; he did not state the patients were enslaved black women. In his diagrams Dr. Sims uses white women because he knew his experiments was scientifically racist and did not want to discuss the subject. Thom’s painting illustrates other physicians were around to witness or even participate in his horrific experiments, but did not intervene to stop it. These experiments on enslaved black women were known throughout the community, and yet everyone remained silent. There are many white physicians such as, Seale Harris (Axelsen, 1985), Irwin Kaiser (Ojanuga, 1993), and Lewis Wall (2007) that defend Dr. Sims medical practice. They believe he should …show more content…
Between 1845 and 1849, Dr. Sims conducted thirty surgeries without anesthesia on enslaved women; Anarcha was finally cured after the thirteenth attempt. Dr. Sims action is an example of what Spillers (2003) defines as a “theft of the body– a willful and violent severing of the captive body…female body…becomes a territory of cultural and political maneuver…” In other words, this act of unwillingness to see the black body as human and see it only as a territorial property ungendered the enslaved woman leaving her powerless. Interestingly, when Dr. Sims moved to New York he only accepted white women as patients, operated on them privately with anesthesia and used sterile instruments. White women had the choice to refuse surgery without anesthesia and they had the right to privacy. Slave laws protected white people, which lead them to believe black suffering is not racial but human nature. Weheliye (2014) voices, slaves were not granted the status of human being and their suffering come from inhuman treatment because they are excluded from the law and