1
00:00:00,160 --> 00:00:02,480
Speaker 1: Hi. I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, a host of the new House

2
00:00:02,520 --> 00:00:06,040
Speaker 1: Stuff Works Now podcast. Every week, I'll be bringing you

3
00:00:06,160 --> 00:00:09,040
Speaker 1: three stories from our team about the weird and wondrous

4
00:00:09,080 --> 00:00:12,920
Speaker 1: developments we've seen in science, technology, and culture. Fresh episodes

5
00:00:12,960 --> 00:00:16,720
Speaker 1: will be out every Monday on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music,

6
00:00:16,880 --> 00:00:24,799
Speaker 1: and everywhere else that find podcasts are found. Welcome to

7
00:00:25,160 --> 00:00:34,000
Speaker 1: Stuff Mob Never Told You From House to Works dot Com. Hello,

8
00:00:34,040 --> 00:00:36,639
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline.

9
00:00:36,960 --> 00:00:42,320
Speaker 1: And this episode was inspired by an article posted over

10
00:00:42,479 --> 00:00:47,360
Speaker 1: on NPRS website from their podcast The Hidden Brain, hosted

11
00:00:47,400 --> 00:00:52,199
Speaker 1: by our favorite, our favorite Shagri Vidandum Um, and it

12
00:00:52,280 --> 00:00:57,840
Speaker 1: was about the so called mothers of gynecology and we're

13
00:00:57,840 --> 00:01:00,600
Speaker 1: going to spend the next forty five minutes talking about them.

14
00:01:00,640 --> 00:01:02,760
Speaker 1: So I will just hop forward and say that I

15
00:01:02,800 --> 00:01:06,319
Speaker 1: posted the article on the Stuff I've Never Told You

16
00:01:06,360 --> 00:01:11,840
Speaker 1: Facebook page and the response was overwhelming. Were people not

17
00:01:11,959 --> 00:01:15,199
Speaker 1: aware of that history? No? They weren't. I mean I

18
00:01:15,240 --> 00:01:16,840
Speaker 1: wasn't either. That was one of the reasons why I

19
00:01:16,880 --> 00:01:20,160
Speaker 1: wanted to share it with people. And so of course

20
00:01:20,760 --> 00:01:24,440
Speaker 1: we knew with that kind of response, um, that we

21
00:01:24,520 --> 00:01:28,039
Speaker 1: needed to take the time and dedicate a whole podcast

22
00:01:28,240 --> 00:01:31,680
Speaker 1: to Jay Mary and Sims, who's known as the father

23
00:01:31,760 --> 00:01:38,399
Speaker 1: of kinnecology, but the women he experimentally operated on that

24
00:01:38,520 --> 00:01:41,920
Speaker 1: essentially allowed him to make all of these scientific breakthroughs

25
00:01:41,959 --> 00:01:45,000
Speaker 1: that we do benefit from in R O, B. G

26
00:01:45,120 --> 00:01:47,640
Speaker 1: U I N S Offices today, right, and we're gonna

27
00:01:47,760 --> 00:01:51,920
Speaker 1: talk a lot about Jay Mary and Simms himself, not

28
00:01:52,040 --> 00:01:54,760
Speaker 1: at the exclusion of these women, but almost I guess

29
00:01:54,840 --> 00:01:57,280
Speaker 1: you could say that we're looking at these women through

30
00:01:57,400 --> 00:02:01,960
Speaker 1: a Jay Mary and Simms lens simply because the fact

31
00:02:02,000 --> 00:02:04,639
Speaker 1: that he was a white doctor with a degree of fame,

32
00:02:04,720 --> 00:02:08,080
Speaker 1: there's obviously a lot of information out there about him,

33
00:02:08,120 --> 00:02:12,480
Speaker 1: and because the women he operated on were enslaved black women,

34
00:02:13,400 --> 00:02:17,240
Speaker 1: we don't have records of these women's voices, and so

35
00:02:17,440 --> 00:02:20,960
Speaker 1: we have to do our part to dive in and

36
00:02:21,000 --> 00:02:24,239
Speaker 1: sort of excavate this history so that we are aware

37
00:02:24,400 --> 00:02:28,520
Speaker 1: of this pretty brutal history of early gynecology. And it

38
00:02:28,600 --> 00:02:33,640
Speaker 1: also hearkens the social media hashtag say her name. You know,

39
00:02:33,720 --> 00:02:36,880
Speaker 1: this is like the nineteenth century version of that, where

40
00:02:37,080 --> 00:02:40,360
Speaker 1: most of the women's names were lost to history, but

41
00:02:40,560 --> 00:02:45,120
Speaker 1: we do know the names of three Anarca Betsy and Lucy,

42
00:02:45,280 --> 00:02:48,160
Speaker 1: and knowing those names and saying those names as we're

43
00:02:48,200 --> 00:02:52,360
Speaker 1: going to is also important for filling in these gaps

44
00:02:52,560 --> 00:02:55,120
Speaker 1: in our history, right because it makes it it makes

45
00:02:55,120 --> 00:02:59,120
Speaker 1: it more real when you realize that these women, they

46
00:02:59,160 --> 00:03:03,040
Speaker 1: weren't just name less faceless black women. These were real,

47
00:03:03,200 --> 00:03:08,079
Speaker 1: live women who were already experiencing so much pain and trauma,

48
00:03:08,120 --> 00:03:12,840
Speaker 1: as we'll talk about. And then we're part of experimental

49
00:03:13,000 --> 00:03:19,359
Speaker 1: therapeutic surgery. So let's get down to old J. Marion Sims.

50
00:03:19,360 --> 00:03:24,200
Speaker 1: He was a physician from Alabama and from eighty five

51
00:03:24,320 --> 00:03:28,079
Speaker 1: to eighteen forty nine, like we said, he performed these

52
00:03:28,160 --> 00:03:33,080
Speaker 1: experimental surgeries on enslaved women to repair something called a

53
00:03:33,280 --> 00:03:37,840
Speaker 1: vestico vaginal fistula, which are holes between the bladder and

54
00:03:37,880 --> 00:03:41,320
Speaker 1: the vagina or holes between the rectum and the vagina

55
00:03:41,440 --> 00:03:46,160
Speaker 1: that can result from traumatic childbirth. Yeah, and so because

56
00:03:46,320 --> 00:03:50,640
Speaker 1: of the pretty impressive for the time advancements that he

57
00:03:50,720 --> 00:03:54,160
Speaker 1: created and championed and the lives that he subsequently saved,

58
00:03:54,720 --> 00:03:57,760
Speaker 1: as Kristen said, he's hailed as the father of gynecology

59
00:03:57,840 --> 00:04:01,240
Speaker 1: and the founder of modern surgy goal guy Ina College,

60
00:04:01,280 --> 00:04:03,640
Speaker 1: and I mean this guy has statues all over the

61
00:04:03,640 --> 00:04:06,280
Speaker 1: place in his honor in South Carolina, which is his

62
00:04:06,320 --> 00:04:10,000
Speaker 1: home state, Alabama, where he established his medical practice and

63
00:04:10,120 --> 00:04:13,760
Speaker 1: made all of those fistula treatment discoveries. And New York,

64
00:04:13,800 --> 00:04:16,680
Speaker 1: which is where he later established and ran a booming

65
00:04:16,839 --> 00:04:19,719
Speaker 1: women's hospital. Although it's a women's hospital that I think

66
00:04:19,720 --> 00:04:24,200
Speaker 1: exclusively serviced white patients. Oh yeah, yes, it was pretty

67
00:04:24,279 --> 00:04:28,000
Speaker 1: much for Irish women basically. So it was really starting

68
00:04:28,040 --> 00:04:31,760
Speaker 1: in the sixties and seventies with the rise of a

69
00:04:31,800 --> 00:04:35,840
Speaker 1: civil rights movement, the women's rights movements that historians and

70
00:04:35,920 --> 00:04:41,680
Speaker 1: physicians began looking back at Simms and wondered, like, wait

71
00:04:41,720 --> 00:04:45,240
Speaker 1: a second, does he deserve these statues? I mean, yeah,

72
00:04:45,279 --> 00:04:49,600
Speaker 1: he accomplished things, but do the ends justify the means

73
00:04:49,760 --> 00:04:53,280
Speaker 1: in his case? Right? And so we want to dive

74
00:04:53,279 --> 00:04:56,400
Speaker 1: in today to the full story of who he was,

75
00:04:56,640 --> 00:04:59,680
Speaker 1: what he did, and who were the women that he

76
00:04:59,760 --> 00:05:06,000
Speaker 1: pre formed these repeated, painful, experimental surgeries on without anesthesia.

77
00:05:06,520 --> 00:05:09,480
Speaker 1: So let's look back quickly at simms early years. What

78
00:05:09,680 --> 00:05:12,640
Speaker 1: shaped this guy? He was born in eighteen thirteen in Lancaster,

79
00:05:12,720 --> 00:05:15,640
Speaker 1: South Carolina, and he was neither of great wealth nor

80
00:05:15,920 --> 00:05:18,720
Speaker 1: of great brilliance, And honestly, he just figured he might

81
00:05:18,760 --> 00:05:21,120
Speaker 1: as well be a doctor, because he was basically like

82
00:05:21,200 --> 00:05:24,600
Speaker 1: middle class, normal, average dude, but with a good education.

83
00:05:25,279 --> 00:05:28,000
Speaker 1: Uh so he's like, I could have been a lawyer. Nah,

84
00:05:28,080 --> 00:05:30,200
Speaker 1: you know, I could be a teacher. I'm not going

85
00:05:30,240 --> 00:05:32,839
Speaker 1: to make my fame that way. I guess I'll be

86
00:05:32,880 --> 00:05:34,880
Speaker 1: a doctor. It sounds like, you know, kind of the

87
00:05:35,000 --> 00:05:39,680
Speaker 1: better call Saul of gynecology. Yes, I love that show, um,

88
00:05:39,760 --> 00:05:42,279
Speaker 1: And so he ends up moving to Alabama, though in

89
00:05:42,320 --> 00:05:46,760
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty five after two of his first patients, infants

90
00:05:47,360 --> 00:05:51,640
Speaker 1: died from a disease causing persistent diarrhea, and he really

91
00:05:51,680 --> 00:05:56,119
Speaker 1: lived pretty uneventful and nearly impoverished first few years until

92
00:05:56,160 --> 00:05:59,640
Speaker 1: he and his family moved to Montgomery, and there he

93
00:05:59,720 --> 00:06:02,799
Speaker 1: started to make a name for himself. He was definitely

94
00:06:02,839 --> 00:06:05,760
Speaker 1: a self promoter. He started bragging about being the first

95
00:06:05,839 --> 00:06:09,880
Speaker 1: in the South to successfully treat club feet and crossed eyes.

96
00:06:09,960 --> 00:06:13,719
Speaker 1: But as a country doctor, he was also paid to

97
00:06:13,839 --> 00:06:18,960
Speaker 1: treat sick and injured slaves on plantations, and plantation owners

98
00:06:19,000 --> 00:06:23,440
Speaker 1: would be heavily interested in providing this kind of treatment

99
00:06:23,680 --> 00:06:28,760
Speaker 1: because sick or injured slaves can't work, and also sick

100
00:06:28,800 --> 00:06:33,560
Speaker 1: and injured enslaved women can't give birth, thus it's a

101
00:06:33,600 --> 00:06:37,920
Speaker 1: profit loss for these slave owners. And then one day

102
00:06:38,000 --> 00:06:42,440
Speaker 1: one of these slave owners sends along to Jay maryan Sims,

103
00:06:43,160 --> 00:06:46,800
Speaker 1: two women, Betsy and seventeen year old Anarca, both of

104
00:06:46,800 --> 00:06:51,160
Speaker 1: whom had vestico vaginal fistula's. But Anarcas. The seventeen year

105
00:06:51,200 --> 00:06:56,840
Speaker 1: olds case was extremely bad because she had a protracted

106
00:06:56,960 --> 00:07:01,680
Speaker 1: labor causing holes from her vagina to a bladder and rectum.

107
00:07:02,000 --> 00:07:03,920
Speaker 1: And she was also the first case of this that

108
00:07:03,960 --> 00:07:08,440
Speaker 1: he'd ever seen, and he'd assisted the doctor with her delivery.

109
00:07:08,520 --> 00:07:12,760
Speaker 1: And at first Simms was like, uh, I don't know

110
00:07:12,800 --> 00:07:16,400
Speaker 1: if I can help in this case. What what am

111
00:07:16,400 --> 00:07:18,920
Speaker 1: I gonna do? I'm better call Saul of you know

112
00:07:19,080 --> 00:07:22,200
Speaker 1: ye old gynecology. Gutacology isn't even really a thing yet.

113
00:07:22,360 --> 00:07:25,520
Speaker 1: How could I help? Well, yeah, but just like Jimmy

114
00:07:25,760 --> 00:07:31,239
Speaker 1: and better call Saul. He figured out a way to help.

115
00:07:31,320 --> 00:07:33,080
Speaker 1: But the whole reason that he's like, I don't know

116
00:07:33,120 --> 00:07:35,880
Speaker 1: if I can help these ladies, You've got to look

117
00:07:35,920 --> 00:07:39,000
Speaker 1: at the context of the time. There had been no

118
00:07:39,280 --> 00:07:42,320
Speaker 1: cure for this stuff. So before we get into how

119
00:07:42,760 --> 00:07:46,400
Speaker 1: Sims pivoted to gynecology from his general practice, you have

120
00:07:46,480 --> 00:07:51,840
Speaker 1: to understand the context of vessica vaginal fistual is because

121
00:07:52,000 --> 00:07:55,200
Speaker 1: it is horrific. So we've already hinted at the fact

122
00:07:55,720 --> 00:08:00,880
Speaker 1: that they are caused by prolonged and obstructed labor. Basically,

123
00:08:00,960 --> 00:08:02,960
Speaker 1: what happens is when the fetus won't fit through the

124
00:08:02,960 --> 00:08:05,640
Speaker 1: birth canal. I hope no one's eating, by the way,

125
00:08:05,760 --> 00:08:08,480
Speaker 1: because this is brutal. I literally when I was reading

126
00:08:08,480 --> 00:08:11,520
Speaker 1: this Christian because what I've included in our notes today

127
00:08:11,640 --> 00:08:14,480
Speaker 1: is not anywhere near the full picture. I just hit

128
00:08:14,480 --> 00:08:17,560
Speaker 1: the high points because I literally got lightheaded reading about this. Yeah,

129
00:08:17,600 --> 00:08:20,720
Speaker 1: graphic details ahead, friend, Yeah, there's like mentions of like

130
00:08:20,960 --> 00:08:24,400
Speaker 1: bone plates grinding. I left that out, Okay. So basically,

131
00:08:24,400 --> 00:08:26,920
Speaker 1: the fetus won't fit through the birth canal and gets wedged.

132
00:08:27,000 --> 00:08:32,880
Speaker 1: With each contraction, it is wedged harder and harder. Eventually

133
00:08:33,760 --> 00:08:36,679
Speaker 1: you get massive crush injuries because of this wedging to

134
00:08:36,760 --> 00:08:39,560
Speaker 1: the soft tissue of the pelvis, and the blood supply

135
00:08:39,600 --> 00:08:46,160
Speaker 1: gets cut off. The fetus suffocates days later, days later.

136
00:08:46,200 --> 00:08:48,600
Speaker 1: Because of where we are in our scientific and medical

137
00:08:48,640 --> 00:08:53,680
Speaker 1: history at this point, the fetus, having been left where

138
00:08:53,720 --> 00:08:58,040
Speaker 1: it is, it finally slides out, as does dead tissue

139
00:08:58,120 --> 00:09:01,680
Speaker 1: from the woman's injured pelvis that is secreted, and once

140
00:09:01,760 --> 00:09:07,120
Speaker 1: that secreted, a fistula forms. The woman then experiences a

141
00:09:07,280 --> 00:09:11,320
Speaker 1: complete loss of urinary and in a woman like anarchist case,

142
00:09:11,400 --> 00:09:16,160
Speaker 1: sometimes fecal control, often in addition to horrific side effects

143
00:09:16,160 --> 00:09:21,559
Speaker 1: like secondary infertility, complete loss of vaginal function, recurring infections,

144
00:09:22,040 --> 00:09:24,960
Speaker 1: and you also have to take the mental health effects

145
00:09:24,960 --> 00:09:28,240
Speaker 1: of this into account. One of the huge effects, whether

146
00:09:28,280 --> 00:09:30,400
Speaker 1: it's a woman today experiencing it or a woman in

147
00:09:30,400 --> 00:09:33,680
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, is depression because not only have you

148
00:09:33,760 --> 00:09:38,480
Speaker 1: lost a child and experienced super traumatic pain, but the

149
00:09:38,520 --> 00:09:43,720
Speaker 1: fact that you are constantly experiencing urinary and fecal UH loss,

150
00:09:44,320 --> 00:09:47,480
Speaker 1: you end up being an outcast. You face huge stigma

151
00:09:47,920 --> 00:09:50,800
Speaker 1: because you can't control your bowels, you can't control your bladder,

152
00:09:50,880 --> 00:09:53,760
Speaker 1: and you smell, which then of course contributes to a

153
00:09:53,840 --> 00:09:56,720
Speaker 1: loss of dignity and self esteem. And some of these

154
00:09:56,760 --> 00:09:59,960
Speaker 1: women did end up killing themselves because of this condition,

155
00:10:00,120 --> 00:10:02,840
Speaker 1: and so it was a huge deal for women at

156
00:10:02,840 --> 00:10:05,280
Speaker 1: this time. I mean, it was completely debilitating, to the

157
00:10:05,360 --> 00:10:08,320
Speaker 1: point that um, in the study that we were reading

158
00:10:09,120 --> 00:10:12,320
Speaker 1: UH one of the only things really that some of

159
00:10:12,320 --> 00:10:15,560
Speaker 1: these women could do would be to essentially sit on

160
00:10:15,600 --> 00:10:19,880
Speaker 1: a chamber pot because I mean they couldn't really go anywhere.

161
00:10:19,920 --> 00:10:23,080
Speaker 1: They were constantly ruining their clothes. I mean, they couldn't

162
00:10:23,120 --> 00:10:24,960
Speaker 1: do anything. And we should note that this is still

163
00:10:25,200 --> 00:10:28,640
Speaker 1: officials are still a major healthcare issue for a lot

164
00:10:28,679 --> 00:10:31,920
Speaker 1: of women in developing nations too. But back to the

165
00:10:32,000 --> 00:10:36,560
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, this wasn't uncommon at all, partially because of

166
00:10:36,920 --> 00:10:41,280
Speaker 1: like lackluster maternity care. But like you said, it was

167
00:10:41,600 --> 00:10:46,760
Speaker 1: catastrophic um And in eighteen forty seven a French surgeon

168
00:10:46,840 --> 00:10:50,520
Speaker 1: reported the medical community hadn't heard of a single case

169
00:10:51,080 --> 00:10:56,079
Speaker 1: where a woman was successfully treated, and physicians were quite

170
00:10:56,120 --> 00:10:59,560
Speaker 1: aware of the debilitating effects of this condition. And eighteen

171
00:10:59,600 --> 00:11:02,160
Speaker 1: fifties evan report that was delivered at the Georgia State

172
00:11:02,200 --> 00:11:06,960
Speaker 1: Medical Society included the description that most of the other

173
00:11:07,160 --> 00:11:13,440
Speaker 1: physical evils of life sink into utter insignificance because of

174
00:11:13,520 --> 00:11:19,440
Speaker 1: the constant pain and mental trauma that the woman has

175
00:11:19,520 --> 00:11:22,800
Speaker 1: to experience. And so it's against this backdrop you have

176
00:11:22,840 --> 00:11:26,720
Speaker 1: a physician with no real reputation to speak of, and

177
00:11:26,800 --> 00:11:31,160
Speaker 1: you've got this terrible common condition with no cure that

178
00:11:31,320 --> 00:11:35,480
Speaker 1: sims ends up pivoting to gynecology. He's he's going out

179
00:11:35,520 --> 00:11:38,320
Speaker 1: in his rounds. One day, he's on his horse, he's

180
00:11:38,360 --> 00:11:42,360
Speaker 1: going out to treat people all over the region, and

181
00:11:42,760 --> 00:11:45,800
Speaker 1: he gets word of a middle aged white woman named

182
00:11:45,960 --> 00:11:48,520
Speaker 1: Mrs Merrill who had been thrown from her horse. She'd

183
00:11:48,520 --> 00:11:50,800
Speaker 1: experienced an injury. He needed to come right away and treater.

184
00:11:51,000 --> 00:11:53,599
Speaker 1: So Sims goes to take care of her and realizes

185
00:11:53,679 --> 00:11:57,880
Speaker 1: that Merrill has sustained a pelvic injury and her uterus

186
00:11:58,040 --> 00:12:01,320
Speaker 1: is out of place. And now at this point, obviously

187
00:12:01,360 --> 00:12:04,720
Speaker 1: he hadn't yet started his focus on gynecological issues. And

188
00:12:04,800 --> 00:12:08,080
Speaker 1: in his autobiography, which I ended up really getting sucked

189
00:12:08,120 --> 00:12:10,960
Speaker 1: into because did I mention he was a self promoter,

190
00:12:11,120 --> 00:12:14,920
Speaker 1: it's a really interesting time capsule of a read. Uh,

191
00:12:14,920 --> 00:12:18,440
Speaker 1: he wrote. If there was anything I hated, it was

192
00:12:18,480 --> 00:12:22,040
Speaker 1: investigating the organs of the female pelvis. But this poor

193
00:12:22,160 --> 00:12:24,760
Speaker 1: woman was in such a condition that I was obliged

194
00:12:24,800 --> 00:12:28,240
Speaker 1: to find out what was the matter with her. How chivalrous,

195
00:12:28,400 --> 00:12:32,160
Speaker 1: so nice, so nice, and and find out he did.

196
00:12:32,920 --> 00:12:37,520
Speaker 1: So what Sims did was have Mrs Merrill squat on

197
00:12:37,600 --> 00:12:41,520
Speaker 1: her bed under a sheet for modesty, and he inserted

198
00:12:41,640 --> 00:12:45,120
Speaker 1: two fingers into her vagina and by doing that, he

199
00:12:45,160 --> 00:12:50,480
Speaker 1: was able to reposition the uterus and she immediately experienced relief.

200
00:12:50,600 --> 00:12:55,120
Speaker 1: In Caroline, I don't quick aside reading that, Like, I

201
00:12:55,160 --> 00:12:58,120
Speaker 1: didn't know it was so easy to reposition a uterus. Well,

202
00:12:58,160 --> 00:13:02,600
Speaker 1: apparently there's lots of pushing in pulling involved, and there

203
00:13:02,679 --> 00:13:06,160
Speaker 1: was something about the position that helped introduce air into

204
00:13:06,240 --> 00:13:09,880
Speaker 1: the vaginal canal. So like you get you get puffed

205
00:13:09,920 --> 00:13:14,280
Speaker 1: up like a balloon. And I say this because literally,

206
00:13:14,320 --> 00:13:18,880
Speaker 1: in his autobiography he describes how she massively queaked when

207
00:13:18,960 --> 00:13:22,600
Speaker 1: she then lay down on the bed and and I'm

208
00:13:22,600 --> 00:13:26,080
Speaker 1: not even saying that as like, I'm literally saying that

209
00:13:26,120 --> 00:13:30,280
Speaker 1: this was his Eureka moment. A quief A queef proved

210
00:13:30,320 --> 00:13:35,679
Speaker 1: to be a Eureka moment. Yeah, so thanks to Mrs

211
00:13:35,720 --> 00:13:41,200
Speaker 1: Merrill and her therapeutic queief, Jay Marian sims that, you

212
00:13:41,240 --> 00:13:45,160
Speaker 1: know what, maybe this similar positioning that gave him that

213
00:13:45,200 --> 00:13:48,640
Speaker 1: kind of access to the uterus could be helpful to

214
00:13:48,760 --> 00:13:53,600
Speaker 1: treat Betsy and Anarca. So he then bought and bent

215
00:13:53,720 --> 00:13:56,400
Speaker 1: a silver spoon with his mind like in the matrix,

216
00:13:56,440 --> 00:13:59,160
Speaker 1: and I'm not really um. He bent the silver spoon,

217
00:13:59,320 --> 00:14:03,880
Speaker 1: which was d of like a prototype or a speculum

218
00:14:03,920 --> 00:14:09,000
Speaker 1: and brings Betsy and to examine her, and he said, quote,

219
00:14:09,040 --> 00:14:14,599
Speaker 1: I saw everything as no man had ever seen before. Yeah,

220
00:14:14,720 --> 00:14:16,680
Speaker 1: I mean just when you're down there as a tourist,

221
00:14:17,000 --> 00:14:20,400
Speaker 1: you typically don't see quite as much. But he with

222
00:14:20,560 --> 00:14:25,800
Speaker 1: his prototype speculum clearly saw the outline of Betsy's fistula

223
00:14:26,200 --> 00:14:28,720
Speaker 1: and was like, it just looks like a tear and

224
00:14:28,800 --> 00:14:32,040
Speaker 1: some fabric. Why can't why can't we fix that? And

225
00:14:32,320 --> 00:14:38,440
Speaker 1: years later he would write again, questionable. I thought only

226
00:14:38,560 --> 00:14:42,280
Speaker 1: of relieving the loveliest of God's creation of one of

227
00:14:42,320 --> 00:14:46,240
Speaker 1: the most loathsome maladies that can possibly befall poor human nature.

228
00:14:46,680 --> 00:14:48,880
Speaker 1: I felt that I had had a mission of divine origin.

229
00:14:48,960 --> 00:14:52,760
Speaker 1: I could not have ceased my labors if I had tried.

230
00:14:53,080 --> 00:14:55,040
Speaker 1: And I'm like, okay, let's think about the context of

231
00:14:55,120 --> 00:14:57,000
Speaker 1: the time again, right, because we can never forget context.

232
00:14:57,040 --> 00:15:01,400
Speaker 1: This is Sminty. This is a a white slave owner

233
00:15:01,600 --> 00:15:06,280
Speaker 1: from the South dealing with enslaved women who are traumatized

234
00:15:06,320 --> 00:15:09,640
Speaker 1: by childbirth and pain. And he previously was like, oh,

235
00:15:09,920 --> 00:15:13,160
Speaker 1: lady parts, and suddenly he's talking about the loveliest of

236
00:15:13,200 --> 00:15:18,360
Speaker 1: God's creatures. And he had no motivation beyond helping the

237
00:15:18,440 --> 00:15:21,400
Speaker 1: loveliest of God's creatures. I am making my most skeptical

238
00:15:21,440 --> 00:15:23,360
Speaker 1: face right now. She sure is, I mean, because that's

239
00:15:23,400 --> 00:15:28,239
Speaker 1: quite a change from his earlier position. So anyway, through

240
00:15:28,320 --> 00:15:31,640
Speaker 1: all of these Eureka moments, Sims ends up writing to

241
00:15:31,880 --> 00:15:36,200
Speaker 1: slave owners around the region to find cases of previously

242
00:15:36,280 --> 00:15:41,200
Speaker 1: ignored or untreated vestico vaginal fistulas. So at one point

243
00:15:41,240 --> 00:15:47,640
Speaker 1: he writes to the man who technically owned Anarca and Betsy, said,

244
00:15:47,720 --> 00:15:50,760
Speaker 1: if you will give me Anarca and Betsy for experiment,

245
00:15:51,080 --> 00:15:54,880
Speaker 1: I agree to perform no experiment or operation on either

246
00:15:55,000 --> 00:15:58,440
Speaker 1: of them to endanger their lives, and will not charge

247
00:15:58,480 --> 00:16:01,480
Speaker 1: a cent for keeping them. But you must pay their

248
00:16:01,480 --> 00:16:05,960
Speaker 1: taxes and clothe them. I will keep them at my expense. Oh,

249
00:16:06,120 --> 00:16:10,520
Speaker 1: just the language of bodies as properties is overwhelming. Um.

250
00:16:10,560 --> 00:16:15,600
Speaker 1: And essentially what he did was rent Anarca and Betsy

251
00:16:15,920 --> 00:16:23,200
Speaker 1: and like twelve other women too. It's it's hard to fathom, honestly. Um.

252
00:16:23,240 --> 00:16:25,840
Speaker 1: So he paid taxes on them for the years that

253
00:16:25,880 --> 00:16:30,440
Speaker 1: he was essentially renting them. Um. But he did complain

254
00:16:30,480 --> 00:16:32,880
Speaker 1: about how it was an enormous tax for a young

255
00:16:32,960 --> 00:16:36,360
Speaker 1: doctor in a country practice. Yeah, get it, get out

256
00:16:36,360 --> 00:16:39,160
Speaker 1: of your Dr Sims. Yeah, I mean it really, it

257
00:16:39,280 --> 00:16:43,600
Speaker 1: really would be the same as someone complaining about property taxes.

258
00:16:43,840 --> 00:16:45,720
Speaker 1: For him, that was that was the tone it took.

259
00:16:45,720 --> 00:16:48,720
Speaker 1: And so anyway, within three months of reaching out to

260
00:16:48,760 --> 00:16:51,960
Speaker 1: all of these slave owners, he had started his experimental

261
00:16:52,000 --> 00:16:56,640
Speaker 1: therapeutic surgeries on Betsy Anarca and several other women at

262
00:16:56,680 --> 00:16:59,280
Speaker 1: this small hospital that he had built behind his house

263
00:16:59,720 --> 00:17:03,640
Speaker 1: for this specific purpose. And one of those first operations

264
00:17:03,680 --> 00:17:06,600
Speaker 1: was on a woman named Lucy who also had a

265
00:17:06,680 --> 00:17:09,359
Speaker 1: really bad case of fistula. Part of her bladder was

266
00:17:09,600 --> 00:17:14,600
Speaker 1: entirely gone, and when the man who owned Lucy sent

267
00:17:14,680 --> 00:17:17,439
Speaker 1: her to Sims, he really wasn't sure again that he

268
00:17:17,480 --> 00:17:20,879
Speaker 1: could help. He wrote, she was very much disappointed for

269
00:17:20,920 --> 00:17:23,679
Speaker 1: her condition was loathsome, and she was in hopes that

270
00:17:23,720 --> 00:17:28,639
Speaker 1: she could be cured. And during her surgery, he said

271
00:17:29,160 --> 00:17:31,679
Speaker 1: that was before the days of anesthetics, he wrote, and

272
00:17:31,680 --> 00:17:34,520
Speaker 1: the poor girl on her knees bore the operation with

273
00:17:34,680 --> 00:17:38,680
Speaker 1: great heroism and bravery. I succeeded in closing the fistula

274
00:17:38,720 --> 00:17:40,600
Speaker 1: in about an hour's time, which was considered to be

275
00:17:40,760 --> 00:17:44,639
Speaker 1: very good work. Vanessa Northington Gamble, who's a doctor and

276
00:17:44,720 --> 00:17:49,119
Speaker 1: medical historian at George Washington University has some quibbles, she writes,

277
00:17:49,280 --> 00:17:53,280
Speaker 1: or she told Shankra Vadantem in that hidden brain piece, listen,

278
00:17:53,480 --> 00:17:58,720
Speaker 1: this was very painful, and uh he would Sims would

279
00:17:58,800 --> 00:18:01,919
Speaker 1: go on to say that Lucy felt as if she

280
00:18:01,960 --> 00:18:03,919
Speaker 1: were going to die and that she cried out in

281
00:18:03,960 --> 00:18:07,560
Speaker 1: pain so much because of these surgeries. And it's like, well,

282
00:18:07,560 --> 00:18:11,520
Speaker 1: obviously this is insanely painful and with no anesthesia. I mean,

283
00:18:11,520 --> 00:18:13,720
Speaker 1: I can't imagine. It makes me like go pale just

284
00:18:13,800 --> 00:18:19,960
Speaker 1: thinking about it. And it speaks to Simms's quote speaks

285
00:18:20,000 --> 00:18:21,919
Speaker 1: to something that we will address more as we go

286
00:18:21,960 --> 00:18:25,560
Speaker 1: through this episode, but it speaks to the assumption that

287
00:18:25,920 --> 00:18:32,400
Speaker 1: black women could sustain more pain than delicate, flower white ladies.

288
00:18:32,960 --> 00:18:35,960
Speaker 1: And so there was just this assumption that he held,

289
00:18:36,000 --> 00:18:39,359
Speaker 1: as did pretty much every other physician in the country

290
00:18:39,359 --> 00:18:41,919
Speaker 1: at the time, that like, oh, it's okay, they'll just

291
00:18:42,080 --> 00:18:44,520
Speaker 1: like grin and bear it when we expose them to

292
00:18:44,600 --> 00:18:49,920
Speaker 1: so much pain. But of course Sims didn't come up

293
00:18:49,960 --> 00:18:54,440
Speaker 1: with a magical cure overnight or in like that hour

294
00:18:54,600 --> 00:18:58,440
Speaker 1: that he claims it took to operate on Lucy. There

295
00:18:58,480 --> 00:19:02,359
Speaker 1: were endless earl years and repeated surgeries again, let us

296
00:19:02,400 --> 00:19:06,520
Speaker 1: emphasize without any anesthesia. Um. And he writes about how

297
00:19:07,320 --> 00:19:10,639
Speaker 1: at last I performed operations only with the assistance of

298
00:19:10,680 --> 00:19:13,879
Speaker 1: the patients himself, basically saying like all of his doctor

299
00:19:14,000 --> 00:19:17,880
Speaker 1: friends were just tired of being there and watching him

300
00:19:17,960 --> 00:19:20,600
Speaker 1: try and fail um and the and ps. Let's keep

301
00:19:20,600 --> 00:19:25,520
Speaker 1: in mind too, that these women were completely naked and exposed,

302
00:19:25,520 --> 00:19:29,399
Speaker 1: while this group of white male doctors would be um

303
00:19:29,440 --> 00:19:33,560
Speaker 1: watching them. Yeah. I mean, after years of watching and

304
00:19:33,600 --> 00:19:36,639
Speaker 1: assisting with these surgeries, these even these fellow doctors were like,

305
00:19:36,680 --> 00:19:38,919
Speaker 1: I'm out, Like I can't, I can't do this anymore.

306
00:19:38,960 --> 00:19:42,760
Speaker 1: And so Sims did train these enslaved women as his

307
00:19:42,800 --> 00:19:48,400
Speaker 1: surgical assistance, and they helped him operate on their fellow patients. Uh.

308
00:19:48,440 --> 00:19:50,399
Speaker 1: And he gets to it. Sims gets to a point

309
00:19:50,520 --> 00:19:53,080
Speaker 1: where he pauses for a couple of weeks because he's

310
00:19:53,119 --> 00:19:55,879
Speaker 1: so disheartened by all of these failures. Again it's all

311
00:19:55,880 --> 00:19:59,560
Speaker 1: about him, uh. And so he's really mulling over how

312
00:19:59,680 --> 00:20:04,119
Speaker 1: to better suture these fishulas. And he reports that in

313
00:20:04,160 --> 00:20:06,320
Speaker 1: the meantime, and this is something you will see in

314
00:20:06,480 --> 00:20:09,880
Speaker 1: any source about Sims, he reports that the women were

315
00:20:10,000 --> 00:20:13,040
Speaker 1: quote clamorous for him to get back to it. And

316
00:20:13,080 --> 00:20:15,600
Speaker 1: on the one hand, I feel like that is used

317
00:20:15,640 --> 00:20:20,480
Speaker 1: to justify a lot of brutality and and awfulness and experimentation.

318
00:20:21,040 --> 00:20:23,639
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, like, yeah, I mean, if

319
00:20:23,680 --> 00:20:25,720
Speaker 1: you were suffering and here's this person who's like, I'm

320
00:20:25,720 --> 00:20:28,200
Speaker 1: going to cure you, I'd probably be like, hey, TikTok,

321
00:20:28,240 --> 00:20:30,719
Speaker 1: can we get back to it? Uh? So there you

322
00:20:30,720 --> 00:20:33,480
Speaker 1: know again there are layers to it. But he ends

323
00:20:33,560 --> 00:20:36,600
Speaker 1: up one night getting the idea for a new technique.

324
00:20:37,080 --> 00:20:41,200
Speaker 1: He tries it on Lucy but it fails to Then

325
00:20:41,280 --> 00:20:44,160
Speaker 1: he finally gets the idea to use a fine silver

326
00:20:44,320 --> 00:20:47,639
Speaker 1: thread once he realized that the unsterilized silk thread that

327
00:20:47,680 --> 00:20:49,600
Speaker 1: he was using was part of the problem. It was

328
00:20:49,640 --> 00:20:52,800
Speaker 1: causing infections, and he had read about a Virginia surgeon

329
00:20:52,880 --> 00:20:58,000
Speaker 1: who had used lead sutures. So in spring eighteen forty nine,

330
00:20:58,119 --> 00:21:01,520
Speaker 1: he tries his new method on a narca and it's

331
00:21:01,600 --> 00:21:11,160
Speaker 1: worth mentioning that this was a narcas unannestetized surgery. Fortunately

332
00:21:11,280 --> 00:21:15,880
Speaker 1: for everyone involved, it worked beautifully. She healed really well,

333
00:21:15,880 --> 00:21:19,479
Speaker 1: and two weeks later Betsy's and Lucy's fistulas had healed

334
00:21:19,520 --> 00:21:22,439
Speaker 1: and closed as well. With this new technique. And the

335
00:21:22,520 --> 00:21:25,080
Speaker 1: thing is, I mean, if jam Mary and Sims were

336
00:21:25,119 --> 00:21:29,919
Speaker 1: a doctor today, he would be all over social media.

337
00:21:30,000 --> 00:21:32,000
Speaker 1: He would be live tweeting all of this stuff. I mean,

338
00:21:32,320 --> 00:21:36,119
Speaker 1: the guy was so driven by self promotion, even to

339
00:21:36,160 --> 00:21:38,479
Speaker 1: the point you could argue of like self branding, because

340
00:21:39,280 --> 00:21:44,280
Speaker 1: he wanted to revolutionized medicine. I mean he specifically took

341
00:21:44,280 --> 00:21:46,880
Speaker 1: on these cases because he wanted to get that kind

342
00:21:46,920 --> 00:21:49,560
Speaker 1: of fame. And this was something that Jeffrey S. Sarton

343
00:21:49,880 --> 00:21:52,520
Speaker 1: wrote about in two thousand four in the Southern Medical

344
00:21:52,600 --> 00:21:57,040
Speaker 1: Journal about how you know. Sims even said I had

345
00:21:57,080 --> 00:21:59,600
Speaker 1: made perhaps one of the most important discoveries of the

346
00:21:59,680 --> 00:22:03,000
Speaker 1: a for the relief of suffering humanity. And in a

347
00:22:03,040 --> 00:22:07,119
Speaker 1: way he's right. I mean, it was a massive breakthrough.

348
00:22:07,200 --> 00:22:11,360
Speaker 1: But there's that question of was he actually concerned with

349
00:22:11,400 --> 00:22:14,960
Speaker 1: the health and safety of anarcha Betsy Lucy and the

350
00:22:15,000 --> 00:22:19,440
Speaker 1: other women that he experimentally operated on, or were they,

351
00:22:19,520 --> 00:22:22,879
Speaker 1: as Dr Graham J. Barker Benfield would argue in the

352
00:22:22,920 --> 00:22:28,600
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, just guinea pigs to advance this white dude's career.

353
00:22:28,600 --> 00:22:31,280
Speaker 1: Because there's no evidence that he ever followed up with

354
00:22:31,320 --> 00:22:34,800
Speaker 1: the women, and no data about the rest of the women,

355
00:22:35,000 --> 00:22:40,320
Speaker 1: and Chakravadantem says on Hidden Brain quote he wanted to

356
00:22:40,400 --> 00:22:44,800
Speaker 1: be a trailblazing researcher, and these women their bodies became

357
00:22:44,920 --> 00:22:50,240
Speaker 1: props in his journey of scientific discovery. Yeah, exactly. So,

358
00:22:50,480 --> 00:22:55,640
Speaker 1: on the one hand, we get incredibly valuable medical advancements

359
00:22:55,680 --> 00:22:58,480
Speaker 1: that will go on to change the lives of callous women,

360
00:22:59,560 --> 00:23:03,000
Speaker 1: but it's done on the back, so to speak, of

361
00:23:03,680 --> 00:23:06,920
Speaker 1: enslaved women who essentially were at their wits end, who

362
00:23:06,960 --> 00:23:09,919
Speaker 1: had no other options available to them. And of course

363
00:23:10,119 --> 00:23:11,679
Speaker 1: there's a lot more to this story that we're going

364
00:23:11,720 --> 00:23:14,280
Speaker 1: to talk about when we come right back from a

365
00:23:14,359 --> 00:23:21,920
Speaker 1: quick break. So, Kristen, I finally got my act together

366
00:23:22,160 --> 00:23:28,240
Speaker 1: and went and used square space to build the Caroline

367
00:23:28,320 --> 00:23:30,760
Speaker 1: Urban Hub on the Internet. I'm so excited. Yes, I

368
00:23:30,760 --> 00:23:33,879
Speaker 1: built a website finally, and it was super easy. And

369
00:23:33,880 --> 00:23:36,159
Speaker 1: I knew that using squarespace with all of its amazing

370
00:23:36,160 --> 00:23:39,960
Speaker 1: templates would be super easy, but it was even more

371
00:23:40,000 --> 00:23:43,639
Speaker 1: smooth sailing than I expected. And at first I wasn't

372
00:23:43,640 --> 00:23:45,239
Speaker 1: sure what template to pick because there are a lot

373
00:23:45,240 --> 00:23:46,919
Speaker 1: of great ones to choose from. I was able to

374
00:23:46,920 --> 00:23:48,840
Speaker 1: sort of mix and match and mess around with the

375
00:23:48,880 --> 00:23:52,520
Speaker 1: whole shebang until I figured out what worked best for me.

376
00:23:52,640 --> 00:23:54,840
Speaker 1: And I'm really happy with it, and you love it.

377
00:23:55,200 --> 00:23:58,040
Speaker 1: I do love it again, It's like I said, it's

378
00:23:58,080 --> 00:24:02,480
Speaker 1: just pictures of Corgis and dies wonderful. Well, listeners, if

379
00:24:02,560 --> 00:24:04,639
Speaker 1: you want to do what Caroline and I have done

380
00:24:04,720 --> 00:24:06,840
Speaker 1: and build your website, because who doesn't need a website

381
00:24:06,880 --> 00:24:10,080
Speaker 1: these days? You need to head over to square space

382
00:24:10,400 --> 00:24:14,280
Speaker 1: dot com and if you use our promo code mom Stuff,

383
00:24:14,320 --> 00:24:18,720
Speaker 1: you can get ten percent off your first purchase with

384
00:24:18,800 --> 00:24:23,040
Speaker 1: a free domain. So really, why shouldn't you do it?

385
00:24:23,119 --> 00:24:25,359
Speaker 1: Because you don't have to pay until you are ready

386
00:24:25,359 --> 00:24:29,920
Speaker 1: to launch that website. So head over to squarespace dot

387
00:24:29,960 --> 00:24:33,520
Speaker 1: com and use a code mom stuff for ten percent

388
00:24:33,520 --> 00:24:36,920
Speaker 1: off and a free domain. And now back to the

389
00:24:36,920 --> 00:24:47,920
Speaker 1: show three Ja, Marian Sims packs up his bag and

390
00:24:48,000 --> 00:24:51,760
Speaker 1: his family and it's like see later, South, I'm heading

391
00:24:51,840 --> 00:24:56,199
Speaker 1: to New York City. New York City, Yeah, and he

392
00:24:56,240 --> 00:25:02,359
Speaker 1: immediately sets about establishing a mixed reputation, as you would

393
00:25:02,359 --> 00:25:05,720
Speaker 1: a stilm with somebody like this, like, oh good, you're

394
00:25:05,720 --> 00:25:08,880
Speaker 1: a really good doctor, but you're kind of a douche

395
00:25:10,320 --> 00:25:15,040
Speaker 1: so okay. Some historians and critics have suggested that Sim's

396
00:25:15,119 --> 00:25:18,440
Speaker 1: left the South, not because, as he claimed, I'm so

397
00:25:18,480 --> 00:25:20,800
Speaker 1: sick like I need to find a better climate that

398
00:25:20,880 --> 00:25:25,119
Speaker 1: suits my health better, but because of criticism over quote

399
00:25:25,119 --> 00:25:29,679
Speaker 1: immoral slave experiments, and as he was getting set up

400
00:25:29,680 --> 00:25:33,440
Speaker 1: in New York, he it is telling that he admitted

401
00:25:33,640 --> 00:25:38,280
Speaker 1: some pretty important details of records of those groundbreaking Southern surgeries.

402
00:25:38,600 --> 00:25:41,520
Speaker 1: In both a paper on the topic and a lecture

403
00:25:41,560 --> 00:25:44,679
Speaker 1: he delivered, he referred to the women as quote healthy

404
00:25:44,800 --> 00:25:48,919
Speaker 1: young Negro women, leaving out the whole slave bit and

405
00:25:49,000 --> 00:25:51,439
Speaker 1: leaving out the whole part that no, they were not healthy,

406
00:25:51,480 --> 00:25:56,360
Speaker 1: they were desperate and also enslaved, and adding insult to injury.

407
00:25:56,440 --> 00:26:00,240
Speaker 1: The early illustrations accompanying his writing about the topics show

408
00:26:00,280 --> 00:26:05,160
Speaker 1: the patients as white, talk about some revisionist history. So

409
00:26:05,320 --> 00:26:09,160
Speaker 1: in eighteen fifty five, just two years later, the Women's

410
00:26:09,200 --> 00:26:12,800
Speaker 1: Hospital is established, and it's a public and privately funded

411
00:26:12,880 --> 00:26:17,480
Speaker 1: charity hospital exclusively for quote female disorders. I mean in

412
00:26:17,560 --> 00:26:21,600
Speaker 1: this from the dude who was so like Lady Pelvis

413
00:26:21,720 --> 00:26:25,680
Speaker 1: is um and Sims earns fame through the hospital which

414
00:26:25,680 --> 00:26:28,919
Speaker 1: did primarily treat Irish immigrant women. But again he got

415
00:26:28,960 --> 00:26:34,800
Speaker 1: the rumor mill going with questions about these experiments on

416
00:26:34,920 --> 00:26:39,680
Speaker 1: these often destitute immigrant women, and weather they were happening

417
00:26:39,920 --> 00:26:45,119
Speaker 1: with informed consent going on, right exactly. Uh. And during

418
00:26:45,160 --> 00:26:48,480
Speaker 1: the Civil War he actually travels to Europe to get

419
00:26:48,520 --> 00:26:52,200
Speaker 1: out of the country and in eighteen sixty three treats

420
00:26:52,240 --> 00:26:57,040
Speaker 1: Empress Eugenie, wife of Napoleon the third for of Fistula,

421
00:26:57,240 --> 00:27:01,159
Speaker 1: and she, by the way, uh, he performed the surgery

422
00:27:01,160 --> 00:27:08,119
Speaker 1: on her while she was under chloroform, so she was innesthetized. Um.

423
00:27:08,160 --> 00:27:10,720
Speaker 1: And again sort of getting to that mixed reputation in

424
00:27:10,720 --> 00:27:13,560
Speaker 1: the early post war period, although he had owned slaves,

425
00:27:13,840 --> 00:27:16,840
Speaker 1: he had defended the system of slavery and written many

426
00:27:17,080 --> 00:27:20,959
Speaker 1: a poor word about black people in letters to colleagues.

427
00:27:21,520 --> 00:27:23,879
Speaker 1: He urged the South after the Civil War to accept

428
00:27:23,880 --> 00:27:27,160
Speaker 1: the fifteenth Amendment and just move on. I really am

429
00:27:27,200 --> 00:27:29,720
Speaker 1: getting the impression that this guy, like, it's not that

430
00:27:29,760 --> 00:27:33,880
Speaker 1: he necessarily has principles, right, It's not like he sticks

431
00:27:33,960 --> 00:27:37,080
Speaker 1: by like the awful system of slavery or you know,

432
00:27:37,200 --> 00:27:41,320
Speaker 1: wholeheartedly sticks by the freedom of the slaves. He's just like,

433
00:27:41,520 --> 00:27:44,600
Speaker 1: can we just like whatever? You know, Like, he's not

434
00:27:45,160 --> 00:27:48,800
Speaker 1: genuinely supporting the women that he performed surgeries on, it's

435
00:27:48,840 --> 00:27:50,560
Speaker 1: more like, I don't know, can I just get a

436
00:27:50,560 --> 00:27:53,600
Speaker 1: better reputation out of this stuff? He's literally only looking

437
00:27:53,640 --> 00:27:57,440
Speaker 1: out for himself and any like qualms, quibbles and arguments

438
00:27:57,520 --> 00:28:00,480
Speaker 1: about freeing the slaves first of all and then giving

439
00:28:00,480 --> 00:28:02,080
Speaker 1: them voting rights. He was just like, I don't I

440
00:28:02,119 --> 00:28:04,159
Speaker 1: don't care. You guys are like really bugging me with

441
00:28:04,200 --> 00:28:06,760
Speaker 1: all of this. How is this helping me at the

442
00:28:06,880 --> 00:28:09,680
Speaker 1: end of the day, exactly? And I mean because of this,

443
00:28:10,160 --> 00:28:13,000
Speaker 1: like people really did not like Jay Mary and Simms

444
00:28:13,160 --> 00:28:15,960
Speaker 1: the dude slash the douche and and by the way,

445
00:28:16,080 --> 00:28:20,040
Speaker 1: Quick Smithy side note, use of douche as a pejorative

446
00:28:20,320 --> 00:28:24,280
Speaker 1: is totally validated because, as we know from the episode

447
00:28:24,680 --> 00:28:29,919
Speaker 1: Bag the douche douche is a horrible um concoction that

448
00:28:29,960 --> 00:28:34,080
Speaker 1: women were tricked into, you know, inserting into their vaginal canals.

449
00:28:34,119 --> 00:28:36,480
Speaker 1: So it is an accurate description in a lot of

450
00:28:36,480 --> 00:28:39,840
Speaker 1: ways of this guy. He's a terrible thing. It was

451
00:28:39,840 --> 00:28:45,000
Speaker 1: in women's vaginas, so true, He's the ultimate douche um.

452
00:28:45,120 --> 00:28:51,120
Speaker 1: So nonetheless, his book Clinical Notes on Uterine Surgery was

453
00:28:51,560 --> 00:28:54,560
Speaker 1: widely read and it took a straightforward approach to women's

454
00:28:54,560 --> 00:28:59,400
Speaker 1: health and gynecological disorders, and the book's emphasis on sterility treatment,

455
00:28:59,640 --> 00:29:04,600
Speaker 1: picularly artificial insemination, was way ahead of its time. Yeah,

456
00:29:04,640 --> 00:29:07,400
Speaker 1: that's great, and then he totally MUCKs it up again.

457
00:29:07,840 --> 00:29:10,480
Speaker 1: And this is actually an interesting Sminty side note for

458
00:29:10,560 --> 00:29:13,080
Speaker 1: those of you who listened to our episode on the

459
00:29:13,120 --> 00:29:17,400
Speaker 1: Marmorian Flock, the group of ladies sculptors in Rome in

460
00:29:17,400 --> 00:29:23,200
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century. Uh. In eighteen seventy, the douche published

461
00:29:23,240 --> 00:29:27,760
Speaker 1: a newspaper account of his treatment of famous actress Charlotte Cushman.

462
00:29:27,840 --> 00:29:33,280
Speaker 1: And now Kushman was one of the primary patrons and

463
00:29:33,360 --> 00:29:39,320
Speaker 1: benefactors of these sculptor ladies. But but seriously, like a

464
00:29:39,400 --> 00:29:43,240
Speaker 1: doctor publishing like, hey guys, I treated this famous lady.

465
00:29:43,920 --> 00:29:46,440
Speaker 1: H The New York Academy of Medicine immediately was like

466
00:29:46,480 --> 00:29:50,040
Speaker 1: are you kidding me? They reprimanded him formally for resorting

467
00:29:50,080 --> 00:29:54,520
Speaker 1: to paid advertising and hello, breaking confidentiality. Yeah, I mean

468
00:29:54,520 --> 00:29:57,880
Speaker 1: this guy totally again, Like I'm just imagining how awful

469
00:29:58,040 --> 00:30:01,120
Speaker 1: he would be on Twitter, like, hey guys, Jen Aniston

470
00:30:01,520 --> 00:30:06,680
Speaker 1: just left my office hashtag winning. And so in this

471
00:30:06,720 --> 00:30:09,880
Speaker 1: decade of the eighteen seventies, you have colleagues and the

472
00:30:09,960 --> 00:30:14,000
Speaker 1: hospital board lobbying charges of unethical experimentation at him. And

473
00:30:14,040 --> 00:30:17,160
Speaker 1: there's some like awful and dismissive quote of his that

474
00:30:17,200 --> 00:30:19,480
Speaker 1: I neglected to include in the notes. But he's basically

475
00:30:19,480 --> 00:30:23,000
Speaker 1: like the ladies meaning the hospital board. He's like the

476
00:30:23,120 --> 00:30:26,360
Speaker 1: ladies are at it again. Yeah, he was just he

477
00:30:26,480 --> 00:30:30,280
Speaker 1: was a joy. In eight seventy six, hooray, he performs

478
00:30:30,320 --> 00:30:33,320
Speaker 1: the first documented gall bladder surgery. I'm getting frustrated with

479
00:30:33,360 --> 00:30:39,320
Speaker 1: his string of successes, Like that's great, first gallbladder surgery. Yeah,

480
00:30:39,440 --> 00:30:44,000
Speaker 1: but he also at the same time promoted now discredited

481
00:30:44,000 --> 00:30:47,560
Speaker 1: techniques like oh very unremoval for various physical and psychosomatic

482
00:30:47,600 --> 00:30:52,320
Speaker 1: conditions termed hysterical diseases. There we go, They all floating uterus.

483
00:30:53,600 --> 00:30:57,440
Speaker 1: So I mean, already I'm annoyed that he has any

484
00:30:57,480 --> 00:31:02,000
Speaker 1: statues take the staff all. I mean, yeah, he was

485
00:31:02,040 --> 00:31:05,560
Speaker 1: clearly no sayt um. But what we want to get

486
00:31:05,600 --> 00:31:10,240
Speaker 1: into is like, was he evil capital e evil? Has

487
00:31:10,280 --> 00:31:12,880
Speaker 1: he been misrepresented? Is he simply a product of his time?

488
00:31:13,000 --> 00:31:15,240
Speaker 1: Like what do we know about that? Yeah? I mean,

489
00:31:15,240 --> 00:31:19,920
Speaker 1: like do does his do his personal views and the

490
00:31:20,000 --> 00:31:23,080
Speaker 1: way that he was able to make those scientific discoveries,

491
00:31:23,080 --> 00:31:28,120
Speaker 1: does that discredit essentially those scientific discoveries, you know what

492
00:31:28,160 --> 00:31:30,239
Speaker 1: I mean, Like, does it literally knock him off that

493
00:31:30,320 --> 00:31:34,160
Speaker 1: pedestal um. And this is something that critics and supporters

494
00:31:34,600 --> 00:31:39,320
Speaker 1: have argued over because there's the argument that enslaved people

495
00:31:40,000 --> 00:31:43,320
Speaker 1: could not truly grant consent in the way we think

496
00:31:43,320 --> 00:31:46,160
Speaker 1: of it today, even if they fully understood the procedures

497
00:31:46,640 --> 00:31:52,880
Speaker 1: and were indeed clamorous to be treated. But they were

498
00:31:52,920 --> 00:31:56,720
Speaker 1: a vulnerable population, no bones about it. They were subject

499
00:31:56,720 --> 00:31:59,360
Speaker 1: to the whims and wishes of the people who owned

500
00:31:59,480 --> 00:32:03,600
Speaker 1: them and rented them in Sims's case, like property, and

501
00:32:03,640 --> 00:32:06,320
Speaker 1: who wanted to fix them, not so that they could

502
00:32:06,320 --> 00:32:09,520
Speaker 1: be healthy and have a better quality of life, but

503
00:32:09,680 --> 00:32:12,400
Speaker 1: so that they could be put back to work, right

504
00:32:12,480 --> 00:32:16,240
Speaker 1: because you know, you have to keep in mind that

505
00:32:17,640 --> 00:32:22,360
Speaker 1: during the system of slavery, black women couldn't pop out

506
00:32:22,520 --> 00:32:27,560
Speaker 1: enough babies, and once slavery is over, then you shift

507
00:32:27,640 --> 00:32:31,000
Speaker 1: into black people are having too many babies, as we

508
00:32:31,040 --> 00:32:34,880
Speaker 1: will discuss in our next episode. Um. But yeah, I mean,

509
00:32:34,880 --> 00:32:38,640
Speaker 1: they were absolutely property. They were not human beings, whether

510
00:32:38,720 --> 00:32:41,600
Speaker 1: it was a doctor or a slave owner. And so

511
00:32:41,640 --> 00:32:46,840
Speaker 1: if these women desperate for relief were owned by Sims

512
00:32:46,920 --> 00:32:51,480
Speaker 1: or on some weird loan. Could they have raised objections

513
00:32:51,640 --> 00:32:54,160
Speaker 1: if he did in an archist case, for instance, need

514
00:32:54,200 --> 00:32:57,200
Speaker 1: to operate thirty times. I mean, we'll never know because

515
00:32:57,240 --> 00:33:00,320
Speaker 1: we don't have records of these women's voices. They might

516
00:33:00,800 --> 00:33:04,160
Speaker 1: have wanted help, but it doesn't mean that they wanted

517
00:33:04,200 --> 00:33:07,320
Speaker 1: the degree of pain and suffering that they were exposed

518
00:33:07,360 --> 00:33:12,960
Speaker 1: to in repeated experimental surgeries. But you've got gynecologist and

519
00:33:13,280 --> 00:33:17,160
Speaker 1: Simms explainers slash apologists depending on how you see M. L.

520
00:33:17,280 --> 00:33:22,600
Speaker 1: Lewis Walls, who argues he's living today he's a modern gynecologist.

521
00:33:23,120 --> 00:33:27,200
Speaker 1: As Sims did in his autobiography, that some treatment was

522
00:33:27,280 --> 00:33:30,520
Speaker 1: better than no treatment. Right. The women quote had only

523
00:33:30,560 --> 00:33:34,040
Speaker 1: two therapeutic choices. Walls rights they could continue as they

524
00:33:34,040 --> 00:33:36,920
Speaker 1: were with whatever palliade of treatment might be provided, or

525
00:33:36,960 --> 00:33:40,480
Speaker 1: they could agree to undergo experimental surgical operations that might

526
00:33:40,560 --> 00:33:43,240
Speaker 1: offer them some relief, perhaps even a total cure for

527
00:33:43,280 --> 00:33:47,840
Speaker 1: their condition. And Walls, who uh nowadays treats women in

528
00:33:47,960 --> 00:33:52,560
Speaker 1: Africa with bessico vaginal fistulas, says that these women are

529
00:33:52,600 --> 00:33:55,240
Speaker 1: desperate for a cure and will willingly submit to almost

530
00:33:55,240 --> 00:33:58,080
Speaker 1: any therapy proposed to them, and and to that and

531
00:33:58,120 --> 00:34:00,520
Speaker 1: to several other things that Walls says in the paper

532
00:34:00,560 --> 00:34:04,280
Speaker 1: that we read that he wrote. I have to say,

533
00:34:04,800 --> 00:34:11,040
Speaker 1: does the modern perspective on vessica vaginal fistula patients does

534
00:34:11,080 --> 00:34:16,600
Speaker 1: it justify as Walls seems to argue Simms's treatment of them.

535
00:34:16,640 --> 00:34:19,680
Speaker 1: It seems to He seems to argue that like you guys,

536
00:34:20,800 --> 00:34:23,840
Speaker 1: why are you making stuff up about how awful he was?

537
00:34:24,080 --> 00:34:28,000
Speaker 1: And that like like you said, Kristen, I mean, yes,

538
00:34:28,080 --> 00:34:30,800
Speaker 1: he made these amazing discoveries that would help so many women,

539
00:34:30,920 --> 00:34:37,440
Speaker 1: especially post advent of anesthesia, but were the means a

540
00:34:37,560 --> 00:34:42,200
Speaker 1: justification for the ends? And canned Walls with his experience, however, firsthand?

541
00:34:42,280 --> 00:34:45,600
Speaker 1: Can he justify the things that Sims did? I mean?

542
00:34:45,600 --> 00:34:49,839
Speaker 1: Walls also argues that Simms wrote about discussing the procedures

543
00:34:49,880 --> 00:34:53,919
Speaker 1: with patients and receiving their consent to undergo the procedures,

544
00:34:54,320 --> 00:34:57,840
Speaker 1: and he says that you basically have to assume that

545
00:34:57,920 --> 00:35:01,160
Speaker 1: these women cooperated because he's like, think about how delicate

546
00:35:01,160 --> 00:35:03,640
Speaker 1: these procedures were. If the women were forced into it,

547
00:35:04,080 --> 00:35:06,640
Speaker 1: you know, and they were thrashing around like trying to

548
00:35:06,640 --> 00:35:09,719
Speaker 1: get away, they would be even more injured. And it's like, well,

549
00:35:10,160 --> 00:35:14,239
Speaker 1: can like I don't know how you can. Yes, they're

550
00:35:14,239 --> 00:35:18,719
Speaker 1: absolutely delicate surgeries, obviously, and you obviously don't want to

551
00:35:18,760 --> 00:35:23,000
Speaker 1: be moving around and like thrashing about when someone's got

552
00:35:23,040 --> 00:35:27,279
Speaker 1: a scalpel and some suitures in your vaginal canal. But

553
00:35:27,360 --> 00:35:30,399
Speaker 1: can you seriously make the argument that like, oh, yeah,

554
00:35:30,440 --> 00:35:33,120
Speaker 1: they were like totally down for everything he was doing well,

555
00:35:33,160 --> 00:35:36,319
Speaker 1: because I mean, if they were to protest, then they

556
00:35:36,320 --> 00:35:39,680
Speaker 1: could be punished, you know, they could face a different

557
00:35:39,760 --> 00:35:44,399
Speaker 1: kind of physical pain. So it's a sketchy argument at best.

558
00:35:44,480 --> 00:35:49,040
Speaker 1: And yeah, this whole like machiavellian like medicine is um

559
00:35:49,960 --> 00:35:55,399
Speaker 1: is honestly tough to unravel because of the benefits, yes,

560
00:35:55,400 --> 00:36:00,960
Speaker 1: that we do enjoy today, as you know, people you

561
00:36:00,960 --> 00:36:05,520
Speaker 1: know undergo modern O, B G, Y N treatments, you know,

562
00:36:05,560 --> 00:36:08,360
Speaker 1: but you still have of course, like to that point,

563
00:36:09,160 --> 00:36:14,839
Speaker 1: people like historian Harriet Washington, who underscores the pain that

564
00:36:14,880 --> 00:36:20,240
Speaker 1: these women went through the torment um and if anything,

565
00:36:20,920 --> 00:36:25,320
Speaker 1: it is a horrifying lesson in us not taking medical

566
00:36:25,320 --> 00:36:31,400
Speaker 1: advancements for granted, the medical advancements to treat the female body. Yeah, exactly.

567
00:36:31,440 --> 00:36:35,279
Speaker 1: And we've mentioned anesthesia a hundred times already, and the

568
00:36:35,280 --> 00:36:37,920
Speaker 1: fact that these women were not under anesthesia when they

569
00:36:37,960 --> 00:36:41,360
Speaker 1: underwent these procedures, and so what is the deal? Is

570
00:36:41,360 --> 00:36:46,920
Speaker 1: he some cruel, sadistic racist who purposely withheld anesthesia and

571
00:36:47,120 --> 00:36:52,080
Speaker 1: probably honestly not a great guy. But if the answer,

572
00:36:52,120 --> 00:36:53,960
Speaker 1: of course, as with all of this, is it's not

573
00:36:54,000 --> 00:36:58,120
Speaker 1: that simple. So Sims began his surgeries on these enslaved

574
00:36:58,120 --> 00:37:01,520
Speaker 1: women a year before anesthesia was successfully demonstrated for the

575
00:37:01,560 --> 00:37:03,800
Speaker 1: first time. Because you've got like, for a hundred years

576
00:37:04,239 --> 00:37:10,480
Speaker 1: doctors experimenting with different types of experimental anesthetics but no success.

577
00:37:10,560 --> 00:37:13,920
Speaker 1: Then in October of eighteen forty six, you get dentist

578
00:37:14,000 --> 00:37:19,719
Speaker 1: William T. Morton administering and effective anesthetic sulfuric ether to

579
00:37:19,840 --> 00:37:23,800
Speaker 1: a patient having a tumor in his neck removed. And although,

580
00:37:23,880 --> 00:37:25,440
Speaker 1: like around this time, you've had a bunch of other

581
00:37:25,480 --> 00:37:28,440
Speaker 1: people who had been testing new ideas and methods, Morton

582
00:37:28,480 --> 00:37:32,200
Speaker 1: really revolutionized it with his delivery system, which helped control

583
00:37:32,239 --> 00:37:35,640
Speaker 1: how much ether a patient inhaled during the procedure, which meant, hello,

584
00:37:35,680 --> 00:37:39,120
Speaker 1: your patient wouldn't o d And it basically gave birth

585
00:37:39,160 --> 00:37:43,319
Speaker 1: to the field of anesthesiology. But even so, the use

586
00:37:43,360 --> 00:37:49,160
Speaker 1: of anesthesia, though it spread rapidly was still not accepted universally.

587
00:37:49,200 --> 00:37:52,360
Speaker 1: There were still all sorts of weird, like you shouldn't

588
00:37:52,400 --> 00:37:55,640
Speaker 1: be put under because like you might die, but also

589
00:37:55,760 --> 00:37:59,520
Speaker 1: like you need to feel the pain and like stay alert. Well,

590
00:37:59,560 --> 00:38:04,560
Speaker 1: And I don't know where this Moreton dentist was located,

591
00:38:04,560 --> 00:38:07,320
Speaker 1: but I would also be curious to know how long

592
00:38:07,400 --> 00:38:11,640
Speaker 1: it would take news of that successful anesthesia to reach

593
00:38:12,360 --> 00:38:17,720
Speaker 1: nineteenth century Montgomery, Alabama. Sure exactly, yeah, I mean even

594
00:38:18,080 --> 00:38:22,440
Speaker 1: proponents of using anesthesia weren't sure that all patients needed it,

595
00:38:22,480 --> 00:38:26,839
Speaker 1: and this was definitely the case unfortunately with doctors men

596
00:38:27,400 --> 00:38:32,400
Speaker 1: treating people with vestico vaginal fistulas women. Writing in eighteen

597
00:38:32,400 --> 00:38:35,680
Speaker 1: fifty nine, for instance, Sir James Young Simpson, who had

598
00:38:35,760 --> 00:38:40,359
Speaker 1: discovered chloroform, wrote, the mere amount of pain endured by

599
00:38:40,360 --> 00:38:43,240
Speaker 1: the patient is perhaps less than in most surgical operations,

600
00:38:43,280 --> 00:38:45,960
Speaker 1: as the walls of the vestico vaginal septum are far

601
00:38:46,080 --> 00:38:49,200
Speaker 1: less sensitive than you would a priori imagine Are you

602
00:38:49,280 --> 00:38:53,960
Speaker 1: kidding me? Men? Seriously? Um? Sorry, I'm like ramped up here.

603
00:38:54,520 --> 00:38:59,040
Speaker 1: And Simpson's words actually echoed uh sims words that he

604
00:38:59,120 --> 00:39:01,600
Speaker 1: had given during an York lecture in eighteen fifty seven.

605
00:39:01,880 --> 00:39:05,800
Speaker 1: During a time btw, that he was exclusively treating white women,

606
00:39:05,920 --> 00:39:09,000
Speaker 1: some of higher classes at his hospital. He said that,

607
00:39:09,040 --> 00:39:13,320
Speaker 1: oh yeah, I never use anesthesia during fistula operations quote,

608
00:39:13,400 --> 00:39:16,960
Speaker 1: because they are not painful enough to justify the trouble

609
00:39:17,400 --> 00:39:22,640
Speaker 1: and risk attending their administration. Plus he'd written about a

610
00:39:22,680 --> 00:39:25,120
Speaker 1: white woman that he'd treated back in eighty nine on

611
00:39:25,160 --> 00:39:28,600
Speaker 1: whom he hadn't used anesthesia either. And I would bet though,

612
00:39:28,600 --> 00:39:33,280
Speaker 1: that that woman would have been working class, lower class,

613
00:39:33,440 --> 00:39:37,520
Speaker 1: because class definitely plays a role if you are a

614
00:39:37,600 --> 00:39:40,480
Speaker 1: white woman in whether or not you would receive any

615
00:39:40,640 --> 00:39:43,800
Speaker 1: of this old school anesthesia. Because there was this idea

616
00:39:44,000 --> 00:39:47,239
Speaker 1: and Sim's totally bought into it, that upper class white

617
00:39:47,239 --> 00:39:52,880
Speaker 1: women were simply too fragile and couldn't tolerate surgery without ether.

618
00:39:53,160 --> 00:39:55,760
Speaker 1: And this also is around the time when we start

619
00:39:55,920 --> 00:40:01,680
Speaker 1: seeing doctors first advocating for cesarean rather than vaginal deliveries

620
00:40:02,040 --> 00:40:06,560
Speaker 1: because of the same idea that these they were called

621
00:40:06,600 --> 00:40:10,080
Speaker 1: bookish at the time. These bookish, wealthy women just did

622
00:40:10,120 --> 00:40:12,879
Speaker 1: not have it in them like a working class a tough,

623
00:40:12,920 --> 00:40:16,719
Speaker 1: working class woman did to deliver. So it was the

624
00:40:16,760 --> 00:40:20,840
Speaker 1: same kind of thinking extended to anesthesia. And then of course, though,

625
00:40:21,880 --> 00:40:23,719
Speaker 1: if you are a woman of color, you are not

626
00:40:23,760 --> 00:40:27,480
Speaker 1: going to get anesthesia, regardless of how much money you have,

627
00:40:27,880 --> 00:40:32,919
Speaker 1: probably because of this racist notion that Sims actually wrote

628
00:40:32,920 --> 00:40:37,399
Speaker 1: about that black women have a quote naturally high pain

629
00:40:37,520 --> 00:40:42,279
Speaker 1: tolerance um. In eighteen ninety two, for instance, we have

630
00:40:42,400 --> 00:40:47,880
Speaker 1: American neurologists Silas Weir Mitchell writing, oh god, and this

631
00:40:48,800 --> 00:40:51,239
Speaker 1: this quote. Oh, I don't even want to quote it.

632
00:40:51,680 --> 00:40:56,040
Speaker 1: The savage does not feel pain as we do. So

633
00:40:56,560 --> 00:41:01,400
Speaker 1: this includes people of color, people all so from Jewish

634
00:41:01,400 --> 00:41:05,920
Speaker 1: and Irish Irish ancestry, also Native Americans and people from

635
00:41:06,239 --> 00:41:08,920
Speaker 1: Southern Europe. You were, they were all believed to have

636
00:41:09,480 --> 00:41:13,760
Speaker 1: a higher pain tolerance slash an inferior awareness of pain.

637
00:41:13,800 --> 00:41:16,880
Speaker 1: This wasn't like some kind of superpower, obviously, this was

638
00:41:16,920 --> 00:41:20,799
Speaker 1: a sign that they were poorly bred. Yeah, but the

639
00:41:20,840 --> 00:41:23,919
Speaker 1: horrifying paradox is that you've got all these white doctors then,

640
00:41:24,040 --> 00:41:27,240
Speaker 1: who accused people of color and people of lower classes

641
00:41:27,320 --> 00:41:32,200
Speaker 1: of overreacting to pain, acting foolish in the operating room.

642
00:41:32,239 --> 00:41:34,600
Speaker 1: But it's like, um, no, I think I think that's

643
00:41:34,600 --> 00:41:37,320
Speaker 1: a false What is that a false truth? What false

644
00:41:37,360 --> 00:41:40,520
Speaker 1: logic that? Like? Oh you think that like, oh you

645
00:41:40,560 --> 00:41:43,560
Speaker 1: can't feel pain as much. So look at you overreacting,

646
00:41:43,560 --> 00:41:46,720
Speaker 1: you foolish person. Shouldn't it be like, oh, no, they're

647
00:41:46,840 --> 00:41:49,160
Speaker 1: human and so they feel pain just like any other

648
00:41:49,640 --> 00:41:53,800
Speaker 1: human and they're reacting appropriately. And it wouldn't be until

649
00:41:53,840 --> 00:41:58,880
Speaker 1: the nineteen forties that doctors started to even just question

650
00:41:59,360 --> 00:42:04,440
Speaker 1: this race based idea of pain, but that racist residue

651
00:42:05,000 --> 00:42:10,080
Speaker 1: remained and remains the um But going back a few decades,

652
00:42:11,320 --> 00:42:15,440
Speaker 1: study from Hawaii found that white surgery patients were likelier

653
00:42:15,480 --> 00:42:20,400
Speaker 1: to be given analgesics compared to Filipino, Japanese, or Chinese patients,

654
00:42:20,440 --> 00:42:23,520
Speaker 1: in part because of those old school stereotypes about how

655
00:42:23,640 --> 00:42:28,160
Speaker 1: different ethnic groups respond to pain. And if we look

656
00:42:28,560 --> 00:42:32,360
Speaker 1: at a more recent study from two thousand to this

657
00:42:32,520 --> 00:42:36,000
Speaker 1: landmark research found that patients of color again were less

658
00:42:36,040 --> 00:42:39,200
Speaker 1: likely to receive the same quality of care as white patients,

659
00:42:39,680 --> 00:42:43,440
Speaker 1: even when both groups had similar insurance or the same

660
00:42:43,520 --> 00:42:47,560
Speaker 1: ability to pay for care. And oh, it's still with us.

661
00:42:47,760 --> 00:42:51,200
Speaker 1: It's still with us, yeah, because a study in January

662
00:42:52,160 --> 00:42:54,799
Speaker 1: found that black patients are more likely to die in

663
00:42:54,840 --> 00:42:58,200
Speaker 1: the ICU than white patients, and the researchers tied this

664
00:42:58,320 --> 00:43:06,239
Speaker 1: to the fact that the doctors literally paid less attention.

665
00:43:06,680 --> 00:43:10,839
Speaker 1: They displayed less empathy to patients of color than they

666
00:43:10,880 --> 00:43:14,120
Speaker 1: did to white patients. They were more likely to physically

667
00:43:14,239 --> 00:43:18,280
Speaker 1: approach and touch and comfort and soothe the white patients,

668
00:43:18,640 --> 00:43:21,560
Speaker 1: whereas when they were dealing with the black patients, they

669
00:43:21,560 --> 00:43:24,080
Speaker 1: tended to stand at a distance, hold a notebook in

670
00:43:24,120 --> 00:43:27,440
Speaker 1: front of them, not offer as many comforting words. And

671
00:43:27,480 --> 00:43:30,880
Speaker 1: we should note that the study authors point out that

672
00:43:31,520 --> 00:43:34,320
Speaker 1: since most of the doctors most but not all of

673
00:43:34,360 --> 00:43:38,760
Speaker 1: the doctors in that study were white, it was hard

674
00:43:38,840 --> 00:43:43,200
Speaker 1: to tell whether the quality of care would have been

675
00:43:43,239 --> 00:43:45,719
Speaker 1: better if they had been, say, doctors of color. But

676
00:43:45,920 --> 00:43:48,839
Speaker 1: they also note that previous research has found that there

677
00:43:48,880 --> 00:43:52,920
Speaker 1: does tend to be better doctor patient rapport when both

678
00:43:53,120 --> 00:43:55,719
Speaker 1: share the same ethnicity. Yeah, and I mean, you've got

679
00:43:56,440 --> 00:44:00,000
Speaker 1: plenty of previous research that shown that up to two

680
00:44:00,040 --> 00:44:05,520
Speaker 1: thirds of doctors do display unconscious racial bias. So nothing

681
00:44:05,640 --> 00:44:08,880
Speaker 1: like calling people names, are like actively trying to treat

682
00:44:08,920 --> 00:44:14,040
Speaker 1: them poorly. But it's bad enough that black patients can

683
00:44:14,080 --> 00:44:17,880
Speaker 1: pick up on it. And Caroline and reading about a

684
00:44:17,920 --> 00:44:21,600
Speaker 1: discrimination that kind of like unconscious racial bias that a

685
00:44:21,640 --> 00:44:23,239
Speaker 1: lot of women of color face when they go to

686
00:44:23,280 --> 00:44:27,560
Speaker 1: the doctor. Um, there was an anecdote from one African

687
00:44:27,560 --> 00:44:30,960
Speaker 1: American woman saying, whenever I have to go to the doctor,

688
00:44:31,200 --> 00:44:34,800
Speaker 1: like if it's something unscheduled, I make sure I dress

689
00:44:34,880 --> 00:44:38,160
Speaker 1: well so that I will be taken more seriously. Yeah,

690
00:44:38,200 --> 00:44:41,319
Speaker 1: because studies have shown that there's a higher likelihood that

691
00:44:41,480 --> 00:44:46,000
Speaker 1: healthcare professionals will assume that people of color are exhibiting

692
00:44:46,080 --> 00:44:48,399
Speaker 1: drug seeking behavior and that they are just lying about

693
00:44:48,440 --> 00:44:53,400
Speaker 1: their pain to get pills. Basically I mean and speaking

694
00:44:53,480 --> 00:44:56,120
Speaker 1: of pain, there was a fascinating and horrifying at the

695
00:44:56,160 --> 00:45:00,439
Speaker 1: same time Boston Globe article from June that looked at

696
00:45:00,719 --> 00:45:03,760
Speaker 1: pain and the way that it registers and is treated,

697
00:45:03,840 --> 00:45:08,120
Speaker 1: and they found that in experiments, both women and people

698
00:45:08,160 --> 00:45:12,920
Speaker 1: of color in general have frequently shown lower pain tolerance

699
00:45:12,960 --> 00:45:14,960
Speaker 1: when asked to do things like hold their hands in

700
00:45:15,000 --> 00:45:19,840
Speaker 1: ice water during experiments, which of course goes against the

701
00:45:20,160 --> 00:45:23,600
Speaker 1: person of color aspect, goes against all of those racist

702
00:45:23,640 --> 00:45:26,480
Speaker 1: assumptions from the nineteenth century that we've been talking about.

703
00:45:27,200 --> 00:45:30,720
Speaker 1: And when they're looking at gender specifically, researchers have found

704
00:45:30,719 --> 00:45:34,080
Speaker 1: that our different pain tolerances emerged during puberty, and women

705
00:45:34,200 --> 00:45:37,280
Speaker 1: end up more susceptible to things like migraines, back pain

706
00:45:37,480 --> 00:45:40,319
Speaker 1: and fibromyalgia. And there's been all of these studies that

707
00:45:40,440 --> 00:45:45,200
Speaker 1: show that heart surgery patients, if you're a man, you're

708
00:45:45,239 --> 00:45:47,319
Speaker 1: more likely to get pain men's and if you're a woman,

709
00:45:47,360 --> 00:45:50,719
Speaker 1: you're more likely to get sedatives, which ties into the

710
00:45:50,760 --> 00:45:55,960
Speaker 1: whole continuing assumption about hysteria and considering how chronic pain

711
00:45:56,040 --> 00:46:00,480
Speaker 1: conditions tend to affect more women than men. And there's

712
00:46:00,560 --> 00:46:05,480
Speaker 1: also this issue of doctors having to be convinced to

713
00:46:05,800 --> 00:46:10,640
Speaker 1: give them the right kind and the enough of their

714
00:46:10,680 --> 00:46:14,360
Speaker 1: pain relievers. Um. And if we look at socioeconomics to

715
00:46:14,800 --> 00:46:18,200
Speaker 1: research has found that low income Americans are likelier to

716
00:46:18,239 --> 00:46:22,799
Speaker 1: suffer pain compared to their high income peers, probably due

717
00:46:22,880 --> 00:46:28,879
Speaker 1: to correlates with manual labor, unhealthy diets, and not being

718
00:46:28,920 --> 00:46:32,880
Speaker 1: able to afford going to the doctor. Yeah, and so

719
00:46:33,000 --> 00:46:37,680
Speaker 1: you're starting to see percolating to the surface, really just

720
00:46:37,800 --> 00:46:41,080
Speaker 1: echoes of everything that we talked about in SIMS day.

721
00:46:41,160 --> 00:46:44,240
Speaker 1: You're seeing people being taken less seriously, pain being taken

722
00:46:44,320 --> 00:46:47,400
Speaker 1: less seriously because it's in a woman or someone of

723
00:46:47,440 --> 00:46:51,880
Speaker 1: a lower socioeconomic class, or someone of color. And speaking

724
00:46:52,000 --> 00:46:56,640
Speaker 1: of race and ethnicity, and among pain patients, black people

725
00:46:56,760 --> 00:46:59,480
Speaker 1: and Hispanic people are likelier to report that their pain

726
00:46:59,600 --> 00:47:02,960
Speaker 1: is fear, and Black women are much likelier, for instance,

727
00:47:03,000 --> 00:47:07,440
Speaker 1: to die from breast cancer. Black women are hyper overrepresented

728
00:47:07,480 --> 00:47:12,080
Speaker 1: in breast cancer patients, but they are more likely also

729
00:47:12,160 --> 00:47:15,319
Speaker 1: to die of it, hyper overrepresented in the sense of

730
00:47:15,560 --> 00:47:21,360
Speaker 1: population proportion. So we also find that black pain patients

731
00:47:21,400 --> 00:47:24,320
Speaker 1: are less likely overall compared to white patients to receive

732
00:47:24,480 --> 00:47:27,800
Speaker 1: pain medication, and when they do receive it, they receive

733
00:47:27,960 --> 00:47:30,560
Speaker 1: less of it. And studies of post top care have

734
00:47:30,680 --> 00:47:36,479
Speaker 1: repeatedly found that white patients receive higher doses of opioids

735
00:47:36,600 --> 00:47:40,319
Speaker 1: than patients of color, Right, And so what's going on?

736
00:47:40,400 --> 00:47:43,880
Speaker 1: I mean the researchers talk about conscious and unconscious bias,

737
00:47:43,960 --> 00:47:48,200
Speaker 1: but also docs assumptions about patients, insurance and payments, so

738
00:47:48,520 --> 00:47:53,760
Speaker 1: you know, like racism, racism, racist assumptions basically. Um there's also,

739
00:47:53,800 --> 00:47:58,360
Speaker 1: though weird internalized ideas about pain. A University of Virginia

740
00:47:58,400 --> 00:48:02,120
Speaker 1: professor Sophie Trey Walter in asked people to think about

741
00:48:02,160 --> 00:48:05,719
Speaker 1: pain in certain situations and then showed them pictures of

742
00:48:05,760 --> 00:48:08,960
Speaker 1: a black or a white person and asked the participant

743
00:48:09,120 --> 00:48:11,319
Speaker 1: how much pain the person in the picture was in

744
00:48:11,880 --> 00:48:15,799
Speaker 1: both white and black participants rated black patients pain as

745
00:48:15,920 --> 00:48:21,200
Speaker 1: less severe. In a related steady found that this pain

746
00:48:21,320 --> 00:48:27,640
Speaker 1: bias that's tied to black or white patients emerges as

747
00:48:27,640 --> 00:48:32,399
Speaker 1: early as seven and tree Walter attributes this kind of

748
00:48:32,600 --> 00:48:38,560
Speaker 1: benevolent racism to the belief that black people have harder

749
00:48:38,640 --> 00:48:43,720
Speaker 1: lives and that hardship leaves to toughness. And this also

750
00:48:44,000 --> 00:48:47,040
Speaker 1: leads us to the trope of you know, the strong

751
00:48:47,080 --> 00:48:51,040
Speaker 1: black woman, which can be very harmful as well because

752
00:48:51,160 --> 00:48:54,799
Speaker 1: of all of these very practical issues of literally like

753
00:48:55,320 --> 00:48:57,640
Speaker 1: you know, doctors assuming like, well, you don't need as

754
00:48:57,719 --> 00:49:03,160
Speaker 1: much pain treatment, um, but also just those those racist

755
00:49:03,200 --> 00:49:07,920
Speaker 1: ideologies too that um give us, you know, kind of

756
00:49:08,040 --> 00:49:12,400
Speaker 1: quote unquote permission to maybe not consider their needs as

757
00:49:12,440 --> 00:49:14,600
Speaker 1: much because it's like, oh, well, you know, they're so

758
00:49:14,640 --> 00:49:17,520
Speaker 1: strong or so have they been through so much so

759
00:49:17,920 --> 00:49:22,319
Speaker 1: even I guess physical pain can also be withstood to

760
00:49:22,360 --> 00:49:26,280
Speaker 1: a stronger degree. Again, echoes of the way that people

761
00:49:26,320 --> 00:49:29,239
Speaker 1: were thinking about enslaved people in this country, like oh,

762
00:49:29,280 --> 00:49:31,960
Speaker 1: they're tough, they're fine, But then again, like those people

763
00:49:31,960 --> 00:49:35,720
Speaker 1: were literally viewed as property. Well, and speaking of which

764
00:49:35,760 --> 00:49:42,360
Speaker 1: I mean this chapter of gynecology. Early gynecological history is

765
00:49:42,560 --> 00:49:49,320
Speaker 1: part of a broader legacy of people of color really

766
00:49:49,360 --> 00:49:53,280
Speaker 1: being used as guinea pigs for a lot of medical

767
00:49:53,320 --> 00:49:56,440
Speaker 1: experimentation that has gone on UM in the United States.

768
00:49:56,760 --> 00:50:00,279
Speaker 1: Todd Sabbatt, for instance, who's a medical history in at

769
00:50:00,280 --> 00:50:04,759
Speaker 1: East Carolina University, told BuzzFeed News quote, medicine is an

770
00:50:04,760 --> 00:50:08,600
Speaker 1: integral part of the story of slavery. And this is

771
00:50:08,640 --> 00:50:11,640
Speaker 1: something that had Henrietta Washington writes about in her book

772
00:50:12,040 --> 00:50:15,799
Speaker 1: Medical Apartheid UM that we referenced in our podcast a

773
00:50:15,800 --> 00:50:20,360
Speaker 1: while back now on Henrietta Lacks, who died from cervical

774
00:50:20,440 --> 00:50:25,880
Speaker 1: cancer UM but without her family's consent. UH cells were

775
00:50:25,920 --> 00:50:31,160
Speaker 1: taken from her, I guess, from her cervix and they

776
00:50:31,239 --> 00:50:35,640
Speaker 1: infinitely reproduce these HeLa cells as they're known today. And

777
00:50:35,760 --> 00:50:37,960
Speaker 1: thanks to these HeLa cells, there have been all sorts

778
00:50:38,239 --> 00:50:43,840
Speaker 1: of medical breakthroughs that have resulted. But the family you

779
00:50:43,880 --> 00:50:49,160
Speaker 1: know of Henriette Lacks rightfully feels so wronged by this

780
00:50:49,280 --> 00:50:52,600
Speaker 1: because again, it's like bodies just being used as property,

781
00:50:52,960 --> 00:50:59,120
Speaker 1: right Yeah, as Chakravadanta said, just props for someone else's advancement.

782
00:50:59,239 --> 00:51:01,960
Speaker 1: And again it's the same thing with sims of like

783
00:51:02,920 --> 00:51:05,680
Speaker 1: you know, researchers and physicians have been able to make

784
00:51:05,719 --> 00:51:12,040
Speaker 1: incredible discoveries based on stolen cells from this woman who

785
00:51:12,120 --> 00:51:15,200
Speaker 1: was not informed and who later died and her family

786
00:51:15,239 --> 00:51:17,960
Speaker 1: who was never informed. And it's also I mean, these

787
00:51:18,000 --> 00:51:22,680
Speaker 1: issues also are not exclusive to the bodies of women

788
00:51:22,719 --> 00:51:26,120
Speaker 1: of color. I mean, you have the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis

789
00:51:26,160 --> 00:51:31,000
Speaker 1: study that was initiated in ninety two, which deliberately infected

790
00:51:31,200 --> 00:51:35,480
Speaker 1: four hundred black men with syphilis. Um. If we go

791
00:51:35,600 --> 00:51:38,840
Speaker 1: back to eighteen fifty five, around the same time that

792
00:51:38,960 --> 00:51:43,319
Speaker 1: Jayme Marrian Simms is building his women's hospital, you have

793
00:51:43,840 --> 00:51:48,440
Speaker 1: John fed Brown, who was an escaped slave. Recall that

794
00:51:48,520 --> 00:51:52,720
Speaker 1: the doctor to whom he was indentured would produce painful

795
00:51:52,760 --> 00:51:55,919
Speaker 1: blisters on his body in order to observe quote how

796
00:51:56,000 --> 00:52:00,440
Speaker 1: deep my black skin went. Um. And then, if we

797
00:52:00,480 --> 00:52:03,680
Speaker 1: want some more horrifying examples, we also have in the

798
00:52:03,760 --> 00:52:08,960
Speaker 1: fifties black Floridians being deliberately exposed to swarms of mosquitoes

799
00:52:09,000 --> 00:52:13,879
Speaker 1: carrying yellow fever and other diseases, and experiments conducted by

800
00:52:13,920 --> 00:52:18,319
Speaker 1: the Army and the CIA. And finally we have in

801
00:52:18,480 --> 00:52:21,200
Speaker 1: the sixties and seventies. And I say finally, just as

802
00:52:21,320 --> 00:52:22,880
Speaker 1: this is the end of my list. This is not

803
00:52:22,960 --> 00:52:27,360
Speaker 1: the end of uh these instances. But in the sixties

804
00:52:27,400 --> 00:52:31,040
Speaker 1: and seventies, you have African American boys being subjected to

805
00:52:31,120 --> 00:52:36,480
Speaker 1: sometimes paralyzing neurosurgery by researcher at the University of Mississippi

806
00:52:36,719 --> 00:52:40,200
Speaker 1: who believed that brain pathology could be the root of

807
00:52:40,440 --> 00:52:47,239
Speaker 1: children's hyperactive behavior. So the subjects he chose black boys, right,

808
00:52:47,280 --> 00:52:51,400
Speaker 1: And so this this country, I mean, we have an

809
00:52:51,560 --> 00:52:58,480
Speaker 1: undeniable history of racist medical developments. Yeah, I mean, And

810
00:52:58,480 --> 00:53:00,360
Speaker 1: and the thing is we can't go back in time

811
00:53:00,520 --> 00:53:03,720
Speaker 1: and change it. And a solution obviously is not okay,

812
00:53:03,760 --> 00:53:07,160
Speaker 1: all of those procedures out the door. You know, if

813
00:53:07,200 --> 00:53:11,719
Speaker 1: we were to retire every single medical procedure that traces

814
00:53:11,760 --> 00:53:18,680
Speaker 1: back to either a recent or distant past racist experimentation

815
00:53:18,920 --> 00:53:22,160
Speaker 1: or ideology, I mean, hospitals would just collapse in on

816
00:53:22,200 --> 00:53:26,360
Speaker 1: themselves probably. So what do we do in that case?

817
00:53:26,560 --> 00:53:29,480
Speaker 1: I mean, what do we do in the cases of Lucy,

818
00:53:29,760 --> 00:53:34,239
Speaker 1: Betsy Anarca and the other women who are really the

819
00:53:34,280 --> 00:53:39,240
Speaker 1: mothers of gynecology. Well, Victoria Gamble, who we cited earlier,

820
00:53:39,480 --> 00:53:44,680
Speaker 1: had the suggestion of memorializing them through their own statues.

821
00:53:44,719 --> 00:53:48,120
Speaker 1: If SIMS has three why don't these three women have

822
00:53:48,280 --> 00:53:52,240
Speaker 1: any And so she says that, you know, the statues

823
00:53:52,280 --> 00:53:55,200
Speaker 1: would not be based on the experiments that they were

824
00:53:55,239 --> 00:53:58,480
Speaker 1: subjected to, because we shouldn't think of them just as victims.

825
00:53:59,000 --> 00:54:01,120
Speaker 1: She says, it might be the three of them together,

826
00:54:01,719 --> 00:54:04,040
Speaker 1: or it might be withholding their children, because they were

827
00:54:04,120 --> 00:54:06,200
Speaker 1: mothers and they were women, so that would be part

828
00:54:06,239 --> 00:54:09,240
Speaker 1: of it. Uh So it would not be she says,

829
00:54:09,320 --> 00:54:13,480
Speaker 1: they're prostrate on the altar of science. And then she says,

830
00:54:14,040 --> 00:54:17,719
Speaker 1: I think what the inscription would say is Betsy, Anarca

831
00:54:17,840 --> 00:54:21,520
Speaker 1: and Lucy the mothers of modern gynecology. And I think

832
00:54:21,560 --> 00:54:24,600
Speaker 1: that that statue should happen. How do we build a statue, Caroline?

833
00:54:24,960 --> 00:54:28,120
Speaker 1: Do you like kickstart that? I yeah, that's like the

834
00:54:28,160 --> 00:54:31,120
Speaker 1: only thing that I can think of is that. I'm

835
00:54:31,160 --> 00:54:34,839
Speaker 1: sure some listener who works for the government knows how

836
00:54:34,880 --> 00:54:38,200
Speaker 1: you get a statue directed, because I mean, can we

837
00:54:38,239 --> 00:54:40,640
Speaker 1: start like a campaign? I mean, I'm sure we could.

838
00:54:40,840 --> 00:54:43,480
Speaker 1: And you know, I think there's an interesting point about

839
00:54:43,480 --> 00:54:45,840
Speaker 1: sims of statues. A lot of people have argued for

840
00:54:45,880 --> 00:54:48,279
Speaker 1: them to come down. But there was one anecdote we read,

841
00:54:48,400 --> 00:54:50,560
Speaker 1: and I'm so sorry I can't remember who it was.

842
00:54:50,640 --> 00:54:53,719
Speaker 1: If it was Gamble or if it was another researcher.

843
00:54:54,480 --> 00:54:57,640
Speaker 1: But she said that she had initially supported taking all

844
00:54:57,640 --> 00:55:00,879
Speaker 1: of the Sims statues down until she took a tour

845
00:55:01,920 --> 00:55:06,439
Speaker 1: of basically the slave trade in Liverpool in the UK,

846
00:55:07,200 --> 00:55:13,520
Speaker 1: and there was the statue of Neptune with two black

847
00:55:13,600 --> 00:55:17,080
Speaker 1: boys basically in chains at the base of the statue,

848
00:55:17,080 --> 00:55:19,240
Speaker 1: and people have been arguing for that to come down,

849
00:55:19,880 --> 00:55:23,879
Speaker 1: And the black man who was leading the tour said, well,

850
00:55:23,920 --> 00:55:27,680
Speaker 1: I don't think it should because if this statue comes down,

851
00:55:28,080 --> 00:55:32,160
Speaker 1: people will forget, people will not talk about it anymore

852
00:55:32,200 --> 00:55:34,719
Speaker 1: because they will not see this visible reminder of the

853
00:55:34,760 --> 00:55:39,040
Speaker 1: horrors that happened right here in this city. And so

854
00:55:39,200 --> 00:55:42,960
Speaker 1: I think, um, that argument could also be applied to Sims.

855
00:55:43,520 --> 00:55:45,880
Speaker 1: It would be nice to maybe see on the plaques

856
00:55:45,960 --> 00:55:51,879
Speaker 1: by his statues, maybe an asterisk explaining that, um, while yes,

857
00:55:51,920 --> 00:55:56,279
Speaker 1: he did develop some incredible life changing procedures, he did

858
00:55:56,360 --> 00:56:00,799
Speaker 1: it at the expense of women and who basically had

859
00:56:00,840 --> 00:56:04,839
Speaker 1: no choice. So, listeners, we now want to know what

860
00:56:04,920 --> 00:56:07,279
Speaker 1: you think about all of this. A. Do you know

861
00:56:07,320 --> 00:56:11,839
Speaker 1: how we can get a statue built? B? Have you

862
00:56:11,880 --> 00:56:14,160
Speaker 1: are you a patient of color who has ever experienced

863
00:56:14,160 --> 00:56:18,480
Speaker 1: this kind of discrimination in the doctor's office. UM, we

864
00:56:18,520 --> 00:56:21,480
Speaker 1: want to hear your stories because obviously this is yes

865
00:56:22,880 --> 00:56:25,360
Speaker 1: history that we've been talking about, but it is history

866
00:56:25,400 --> 00:56:29,160
Speaker 1: that lives on today. So mom Stuff at how stuff

867
00:56:29,200 --> 00:56:31,239
Speaker 1: works dot com is our email address. You can also

868
00:56:31,239 --> 00:56:34,719
Speaker 1: tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or messages on Facebook,

869
00:56:34,920 --> 00:56:36,920
Speaker 1: and we've got a couple of messages to share with

870
00:56:37,000 --> 00:56:45,640
Speaker 1: you right now. I've got a letter here from another

871
00:56:45,719 --> 00:56:50,520
Speaker 1: Christian in response to our colorism episode. She says, you

872
00:56:50,680 --> 00:56:53,520
Speaker 1: mentioned a study that stated how the dark skinned black

873
00:56:53,560 --> 00:56:55,759
Speaker 1: women who were surveyed all said that they had at

874
00:56:55,760 --> 00:56:57,959
Speaker 1: some point wanted to be lighter skinned, but the light

875
00:56:58,040 --> 00:57:01,560
Speaker 1: skinned black women surveyed had never wanted to be darker.

876
00:57:01,640 --> 00:57:03,440
Speaker 1: This reminded me of something I used to do in

877
00:57:03,480 --> 00:57:07,200
Speaker 1: my childhood, a very light skinned Mexican American girl. I

878
00:57:07,239 --> 00:57:09,200
Speaker 1: would purposely try to stay out in the sun as

879
00:57:09,200 --> 00:57:12,239
Speaker 1: long as I could, wanting to become dark like my sisters,

880
00:57:12,840 --> 00:57:15,320
Speaker 1: most of my family members, and the group of Mexican

881
00:57:15,400 --> 00:57:18,240
Speaker 1: kids at my school. I would even take suntan lotion

882
00:57:18,240 --> 00:57:20,200
Speaker 1: and rub it all over myself and then go lie

883
00:57:20,240 --> 00:57:22,480
Speaker 1: out in the sun. I remember that, even at a

884
00:57:22,560 --> 00:57:25,520
Speaker 1: young age, I was conscious that darker skinned Mexicans were

885
00:57:25,520 --> 00:57:29,320
Speaker 1: perceived as more authentically Mexican, and that my light skin,

886
00:57:29,440 --> 00:57:31,920
Speaker 1: compounded with the fact that I wasn't taught Spanish, made

887
00:57:31,960 --> 00:57:34,720
Speaker 1: it more difficult for me to gain acceptance in Mexican

888
00:57:34,840 --> 00:57:37,600
Speaker 1: social groups and even within my own family, in which

889
00:57:37,600 --> 00:57:40,520
Speaker 1: only my mother, grandmother, and I are light. Don't get

890
00:57:40,520 --> 00:57:42,840
Speaker 1: me wrong, I definitely know my privilege as a light

891
00:57:42,880 --> 00:57:46,280
Speaker 1: skinned Mexican and have seen firsthand how, for example, my

892
00:57:46,320 --> 00:57:50,200
Speaker 1: father's dark skin has made him a target for random searches,

893
00:57:50,760 --> 00:57:54,040
Speaker 1: being followed around department stores, being asked for receipts upon

894
00:57:54,120 --> 00:57:56,760
Speaker 1: leaving a store, and even having racial slurs hurled him

895
00:57:56,760 --> 00:57:59,600
Speaker 1: from moving cars. I know without a doubt that I

896
00:57:59,760 --> 00:58:02,080
Speaker 1: moved through life differently than he does, and that our

897
00:58:02,120 --> 00:58:05,560
Speaker 1: skin colors impact our daily lives. In fact, my mom

898
00:58:05,600 --> 00:58:08,360
Speaker 1: once told me that instead of focusing on radio journalism,

899
00:58:08,360 --> 00:58:10,560
Speaker 1: I should go into TV news, as it would be

900
00:58:10,600 --> 00:58:12,240
Speaker 1: easy for me to get a job since as a

901
00:58:12,320 --> 00:58:15,080
Speaker 1: Latina I would be a diversity higher but that I

902
00:58:15,080 --> 00:58:18,160
Speaker 1: looked quote white enough to not be perceived as threatening

903
00:58:18,200 --> 00:58:21,840
Speaker 1: to the status quo a happy medium for everyone. Even now,

904
00:58:22,600 --> 00:58:25,880
Speaker 1: I struggle with feeling authentically connected to my Mexican heritage

905
00:58:25,920 --> 00:58:28,120
Speaker 1: due to my light skin, but I try to remember

906
00:58:28,120 --> 00:58:30,600
Speaker 1: that authentic Mexicans come in all shades, from white to

907
00:58:30,640 --> 00:58:33,680
Speaker 1: black and everything in between. Thanks for these thoughts and

908
00:58:33,800 --> 00:58:37,840
Speaker 1: memory provoking podcasts, and thank you Kristen, so I've got

909
00:58:37,840 --> 00:58:40,480
Speaker 1: to let her here from chin Wei also about our

910
00:58:40,480 --> 00:58:43,640
Speaker 1: colorism episode, and chin Wei writes, I was going to

911
00:58:43,760 --> 00:58:46,800
Speaker 1: skip this particular episode, but I'm glad I listened to

912
00:58:46,840 --> 00:58:49,440
Speaker 1: the end. As a dark skinned woman, I'm kind of

913
00:58:49,480 --> 00:58:52,680
Speaker 1: tired of everyone telling me how bad my life should be,

914
00:58:53,240 --> 00:58:55,400
Speaker 1: how hard I must have it, and how I most

915
00:58:55,400 --> 00:58:59,320
Speaker 1: certainly hate myself. I've never experienced those things. I'm not

916
00:58:59,400 --> 00:59:02,920
Speaker 1: sure what luck prevented me from not having that particular experience,

917
00:59:02,920 --> 00:59:05,760
Speaker 1: but I'm very grateful for it. I struggle between trying

918
00:59:05,760 --> 00:59:08,840
Speaker 1: not to have my experienced eras and trying to support

919
00:59:08,840 --> 00:59:12,160
Speaker 1: any relief exposure of colorism can bring to those impacted

920
00:59:12,200 --> 00:59:14,360
Speaker 1: by it. I know it must have been difficult for

921
00:59:14,400 --> 00:59:16,800
Speaker 1: two white women to speak about this, so I applaud

922
00:59:16,840 --> 00:59:19,720
Speaker 1: your efforts. I do think there's so much nuance missed

923
00:59:19,720 --> 00:59:22,400
Speaker 1: when you don't have personal experience to draw on, and

924
00:59:22,440 --> 00:59:24,919
Speaker 1: I think this episode could have been made slightly better

925
00:59:25,040 --> 00:59:28,240
Speaker 1: from first hand accounts. And for the record, Shinway totally

926
00:59:28,280 --> 00:59:31,880
Speaker 1: agree with you there. As a black, non African American woman,

927
00:59:32,000 --> 00:59:35,360
Speaker 1: I want to give particular credit to African American women

928
00:59:35,400 --> 00:59:39,680
Speaker 1: for continuing to push this conversation worldwide. I think there's

929
00:59:39,680 --> 00:59:41,960
Speaker 1: been a lot of progress on this issue, a lot

930
00:59:42,000 --> 00:59:45,440
Speaker 1: of recognition of our biases and active individual steps to

931
00:59:45,480 --> 00:59:47,760
Speaker 1: combat it as well. And there's still more to do.

932
00:59:47,880 --> 00:59:51,240
Speaker 1: But I truly believe my darker tone nieces and nephews

933
00:59:51,240 --> 00:59:54,040
Speaker 1: will grow up in a different society than the one

934
00:59:54,240 --> 00:59:58,919
Speaker 1: my peers experienced. Thanks for the attempt, Hinway, well, thank

935
00:59:59,000 --> 01:00:03,640
Speaker 1: you for sharing your personal experiences with us, because I mean,

936
01:00:03,680 --> 01:00:07,320
Speaker 1: I think, as we said in that podcast, we wanted

937
01:00:07,400 --> 01:00:11,800
Speaker 1: to hear firsthand accounts because you're absolutely right to white

938
01:00:11,800 --> 01:00:17,479
Speaker 1: skinned women cannot firsthand relate to this um. So keep

939
01:00:17,600 --> 01:00:20,479
Speaker 1: the conversation going. Friends, Mom Stuff at how stuff works

940
01:00:20,480 --> 01:00:23,480
Speaker 1: dot com is where you can send your letters and

941
01:00:23,560 --> 01:00:25,560
Speaker 1: for links to all of our social media as well

942
01:00:25,600 --> 01:00:28,880
Speaker 1: as all of our blogs, videos, and podcasts with our sources.

943
01:00:29,440 --> 01:00:32,680
Speaker 1: If you want to learn more about the mothers of gynecology,

944
01:00:32,840 --> 01:00:35,840
Speaker 1: head on over to stuff Mom Never Told You dot

945
01:00:35,840 --> 01:00:42,800
Speaker 1: com for more on this and thousands of other topics.

946
01:00:42,920 --> 01:00:52,160
Speaker 1: Does it, How stuff works dot com