1
00:00:05,240 --> 00:00:06,720
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha.

2
00:00:06,840 --> 00:00:08,360
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff I Never Told You, a production of

3
00:00:08,400 --> 00:00:21,560
Speaker 2: iHeart Radio, and today we're bringing back a classic inspired

4
00:00:21,600 --> 00:00:26,320
Speaker 2: by the recent Monday mini that you did, Samantha, about gynecology.

5
00:00:26,920 --> 00:00:30,560
Speaker 2: Because past host Kristen and Caroline did a whole episode

6
00:00:31,360 --> 00:00:36,400
Speaker 2: about gynecology. I will tell you this episode is a

7
00:00:36,440 --> 00:00:40,800
Speaker 2: little rough the past of it's not pretty, So just

8
00:00:40,920 --> 00:00:42,920
Speaker 2: a warning before you endeavor.

9
00:00:43,280 --> 00:00:43,640
Speaker 3: Warning.

10
00:00:44,000 --> 00:00:48,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, just a little content warning. But it is really

11
00:00:48,640 --> 00:00:54,320
Speaker 2: interesting because it we were discussing men in the field

12
00:00:54,640 --> 00:00:59,440
Speaker 2: of gynecology and in this episode they touched on that

13
00:00:59,520 --> 00:01:01,160
Speaker 2: and then they talk about a lot of the hidden

14
00:01:01,600 --> 00:01:06,640
Speaker 2: women who were doing gynecology and not getting the credit

15
00:01:06,959 --> 00:01:09,920
Speaker 2: that men were getting, which is so often the case.

16
00:01:10,760 --> 00:01:16,480
Speaker 2: So please enjoy this classic episode.

17
00:01:17,200 --> 00:01:20,200
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff, Mom Never Told You from how Stuff

18
00:01:20,200 --> 00:01:28,040
Speaker 3: Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

19
00:01:28,040 --> 00:01:29,800
Speaker 1: I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline.

20
00:01:29,840 --> 00:01:35,199
Speaker 4: And this episode was inspired by an article posted over

21
00:01:35,360 --> 00:01:40,720
Speaker 4: on NPR's website from their podcast The Hidden Brain, hosted.

22
00:01:40,319 --> 00:01:42,400
Speaker 1: By our favorite, our favorite.

23
00:01:42,120 --> 00:01:43,160
Speaker 3: Shagar Vedantam.

24
00:01:43,240 --> 00:01:48,640
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it was about the so called mothers of gynecology.

25
00:01:49,320 --> 00:01:52,640
Speaker 4: And we're going to spend the next forty five minutes

26
00:01:52,680 --> 00:01:55,160
Speaker 4: talking about them. So I will just hop forward and

27
00:01:55,200 --> 00:01:58,760
Speaker 4: say that I posted the article on the Stuff I've

28
00:01:58,760 --> 00:02:03,720
Speaker 4: Never Told You Facebook page and the response was overwhelming.

29
00:02:04,120 --> 00:02:05,920
Speaker 1: Were people not aware of that history?

30
00:02:06,600 --> 00:02:08,919
Speaker 4: No, they weren't. I mean I wasn't either. That was

31
00:02:08,960 --> 00:02:10,440
Speaker 4: one of the reasons why I wanted to share it

32
00:02:10,480 --> 00:02:15,080
Speaker 4: with people. And so of course we knew with that

33
00:02:15,200 --> 00:02:19,000
Speaker 4: kind of response that we needed to take the time

34
00:02:19,360 --> 00:02:23,160
Speaker 4: and dedicate a whole podcast to Jay Marion Sims who's

35
00:02:23,160 --> 00:02:27,960
Speaker 4: known as the father of kynecology, but the women he

36
00:02:28,840 --> 00:02:33,400
Speaker 4: experimentally operated on that essentially allowed him to make all

37
00:02:33,480 --> 00:02:37,320
Speaker 4: of these scientific breakthroughs that we do benefit from in

38
00:02:37,400 --> 00:02:39,800
Speaker 4: our obgui n's offices today.

39
00:02:39,720 --> 00:02:42,520
Speaker 5: Right, And we're gonna talk a lot about Jay Marion

40
00:02:42,600 --> 00:02:46,840
Speaker 5: Simms himself, not at the exclusion of these women, but

41
00:02:46,960 --> 00:02:49,000
Speaker 5: almost I guess you could say that we're looking at

42
00:02:49,040 --> 00:02:54,320
Speaker 5: these women through a Jay Marion Sims lens simply because

43
00:02:54,520 --> 00:02:56,760
Speaker 5: the fact that he was a white doctor with a

44
00:02:56,800 --> 00:02:59,440
Speaker 5: degree of fame, there's obviously a lot of.

45
00:02:59,400 --> 00:03:00,720
Speaker 1: Information they're about him.

46
00:03:01,040 --> 00:03:05,400
Speaker 5: And because the women he operated on were enslaved black women.

47
00:03:06,320 --> 00:03:10,119
Speaker 5: We don't have records of these women's voices, and so

48
00:03:10,360 --> 00:03:13,880
Speaker 5: we have to do our part to dive in and

49
00:03:13,919 --> 00:03:17,160
Speaker 5: sort of excavate this history so that we are aware

50
00:03:17,360 --> 00:03:21,000
Speaker 5: of this pretty brutal history of early gynecology.

51
00:03:21,240 --> 00:03:25,800
Speaker 4: And it also hearkens the social media hashtag say her Name.

52
00:03:26,360 --> 00:03:29,360
Speaker 4: You know, this is like the nineteenth century version of that,

53
00:03:29,480 --> 00:03:32,960
Speaker 4: where most of the women's names were lost to history.

54
00:03:33,200 --> 00:03:36,880
Speaker 4: But we do know the names of three Anarka, Betsy,

55
00:03:37,360 --> 00:03:40,200
Speaker 4: and Lucy. And knowing those names and saying those names

56
00:03:40,760 --> 00:03:44,560
Speaker 4: as we're going to is also important for filling in

57
00:03:44,600 --> 00:03:46,520
Speaker 4: these gaps in our history.

58
00:03:46,400 --> 00:03:50,200
Speaker 5: Right because it makes it more real when you realize

59
00:03:50,360 --> 00:03:54,600
Speaker 5: that these women, they weren't just nameless, faceless black women.

60
00:03:54,760 --> 00:03:59,360
Speaker 5: These were real, live women who were already experiencing so

61
00:03:59,520 --> 00:04:03,839
Speaker 5: much and trauma, as we'll talk about. And then we're

62
00:04:03,920 --> 00:04:07,080
Speaker 5: part of experimental therapeutic surgery.

63
00:04:08,000 --> 00:04:12,200
Speaker 3: So let's get down to old J. Marion Sims.

64
00:04:12,280 --> 00:04:16,880
Speaker 4: He was a physician from Alabama, and from eighteen forty

65
00:04:16,880 --> 00:04:20,760
Speaker 4: five to eighteen forty nine, like we said, he performed

66
00:04:20,800 --> 00:04:25,520
Speaker 4: these experimental surgeries on enslaved women to repair something called

67
00:04:25,920 --> 00:04:31,440
Speaker 4: a vesicovaginal fistula, which holds between the bladder and the vagina,

68
00:04:31,680 --> 00:04:34,719
Speaker 4: or holds between the rectum and the vagina that can

69
00:04:34,760 --> 00:04:37,160
Speaker 4: result from traumatic childbirth.

70
00:04:37,680 --> 00:04:37,960
Speaker 3: Yeah.

71
00:04:38,000 --> 00:04:42,479
Speaker 5: And so because of the pretty impressive for the time

72
00:04:42,600 --> 00:04:45,160
Speaker 5: advancements that he created and championed and the.

73
00:04:45,160 --> 00:04:47,040
Speaker 1: Lives that he subsequently saved.

74
00:04:47,680 --> 00:04:50,680
Speaker 5: As Kristen said, he's hailed as the father of gynecology

75
00:04:50,760 --> 00:04:54,520
Speaker 5: and the founder of modern surgical gynecology. And I mean,

76
00:04:54,520 --> 00:04:57,240
Speaker 5: this guy has statues all over the place in his

77
00:04:57,279 --> 00:05:00,880
Speaker 5: honor in South Carolina, which is his home state, Alabama,

78
00:05:00,960 --> 00:05:03,719
Speaker 5: where he established his medical practice and made all of

79
00:05:03,760 --> 00:05:07,240
Speaker 5: those fistula treatment discoveries, and New York, which is where

80
00:05:07,240 --> 00:05:10,640
Speaker 5: he later established and ran a booming women's hospital.

81
00:05:10,720 --> 00:05:13,960
Speaker 4: Although it's a women's hospital that I think exclusively serviced

82
00:05:14,000 --> 00:05:14,919
Speaker 4: white patients.

83
00:05:14,960 --> 00:05:19,080
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, yes, it was pretty much for Irish women basically.

84
00:05:19,440 --> 00:05:22,839
Speaker 4: So it was really starting in the sixties and seventies

85
00:05:23,640 --> 00:05:25,840
Speaker 4: with the rise of a civil rights movement and the

86
00:05:25,880 --> 00:05:31,240
Speaker 4: women's rights movements that historians and physicians began looking back

87
00:05:31,440 --> 00:05:35,920
Speaker 4: at Sims and wondered, like, wait a second, does.

88
00:05:35,680 --> 00:05:37,600
Speaker 3: He deserve these statues?

89
00:05:37,640 --> 00:05:41,280
Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, he accomplished things, but do the ends

90
00:05:41,480 --> 00:05:44,159
Speaker 4: justify the means in his case? Right?

91
00:05:44,240 --> 00:05:46,919
Speaker 5: And so we want to dive in today to the

92
00:05:47,040 --> 00:05:50,480
Speaker 5: full story of who he was, what he did, and

93
00:05:50,720 --> 00:05:55,520
Speaker 5: who were the women that he performed these repeated, painful

94
00:05:55,600 --> 00:06:01,240
Speaker 5: experimental surgeries on without anesthesia. So let's look back quickly

95
00:06:01,240 --> 00:06:02,320
Speaker 5: at Sim's early years.

96
00:06:02,360 --> 00:06:03,320
Speaker 1: What shape this guy?

97
00:06:03,360 --> 00:06:06,440
Speaker 5: He was born in eighteen thirteen in Lancaster, South Carolina,

98
00:06:06,480 --> 00:06:09,839
Speaker 5: and he was neither of great wealth nor of great brilliance,

99
00:06:09,920 --> 00:06:12,000
Speaker 5: and honestly, he just figured he might as well be

100
00:06:12,040 --> 00:06:15,200
Speaker 5: a doctor because he was basically like middle class, normal

101
00:06:15,240 --> 00:06:19,200
Speaker 5: average dude, but with a good education. So he's like, uh,

102
00:06:19,240 --> 00:06:21,240
Speaker 5: I could have been a lawyer. Nah, you know, I

103
00:06:21,240 --> 00:06:23,480
Speaker 5: could be a teacher. Uh, I'm not going to make

104
00:06:23,520 --> 00:06:26,320
Speaker 5: my fame that way. I guess I'll be a doctor.

105
00:06:26,440 --> 00:06:28,479
Speaker 4: He sounds like, you know, kind of the better call

106
00:06:28,600 --> 00:06:30,000
Speaker 4: Saul of Gynecology.

107
00:06:30,360 --> 00:06:31,599
Speaker 1: Yes, oh, I love that show.

108
00:06:32,720 --> 00:06:35,200
Speaker 5: And so he ends up moving to Alabama, though in

109
00:06:35,240 --> 00:06:39,640
Speaker 5: eighteen thirty five after two of his first patients, infants

110
00:06:40,279 --> 00:06:44,559
Speaker 5: died from a disease causing persistent diarrhea, and he really

111
00:06:44,600 --> 00:06:48,680
Speaker 5: lived a pretty uneventful and nearly impoverished first few years

112
00:06:48,760 --> 00:06:52,520
Speaker 5: until he and his family moved to Montgomery, and there

113
00:06:52,560 --> 00:06:55,080
Speaker 5: he started to make a name for himself. He was

114
00:06:55,200 --> 00:06:58,279
Speaker 5: definitely a self promoter. He started bragging about being the

115
00:06:58,360 --> 00:07:02,839
Speaker 5: first in the South successfully treat club feet and crossed eyes.

116
00:07:02,880 --> 00:07:06,680
Speaker 5: But as a country doctor, he was also paid to

117
00:07:06,800 --> 00:07:10,960
Speaker 5: treat sick and injured slaves on plantations.

118
00:07:10,320 --> 00:07:14,360
Speaker 4: And the plantation owners would be heavily interested in providing

119
00:07:14,400 --> 00:07:19,880
Speaker 4: this kind of treatment because sick or injured slaves can't work,

120
00:07:20,440 --> 00:07:25,080
Speaker 4: and also sick and injured enslaved women can't give birth,

121
00:07:25,800 --> 00:07:30,240
Speaker 4: thus it's a profit loss for these slave owners. And

122
00:07:30,280 --> 00:07:33,560
Speaker 4: then one day one of these slave owners sends along

123
00:07:33,760 --> 00:07:38,440
Speaker 4: to Jay Mary and Sims to women Betsy and seventeen

124
00:07:38,520 --> 00:07:42,120
Speaker 4: year old a Narca, both of whom had vesico vaginal fistulas,

125
00:07:42,440 --> 00:07:48,280
Speaker 4: but Anarca's the seventeen year old's case was extremely bad

126
00:07:48,360 --> 00:07:51,720
Speaker 4: because she had had a protracted labor, causing holes from

127
00:07:51,800 --> 00:07:55,280
Speaker 4: her vagina to her bladder and rectum. And she was

128
00:07:55,320 --> 00:07:58,360
Speaker 4: also the first case of this that he'd ever seen,

129
00:07:58,440 --> 00:08:01,400
Speaker 4: and he'd assisted the doctor with her delivery.

130
00:08:01,440 --> 00:08:03,400
Speaker 3: And at first Sims was.

131
00:08:03,400 --> 00:08:06,040
Speaker 4: Like, uh, I don't know if.

132
00:08:05,920 --> 00:08:09,880
Speaker 3: I can help in this case. What am I gonna do?

133
00:08:09,960 --> 00:08:13,160
Speaker 3: I'm better call Saul of you know, ye old gynecology.

134
00:08:13,200 --> 00:08:16,000
Speaker 4: Gynecology isn't even really a thing yet how could I help?

135
00:08:16,320 --> 00:08:19,880
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, but just like Jimmy in Better Call Saul,

136
00:08:20,760 --> 00:08:24,800
Speaker 5: he figured out a way to help. But the whole

137
00:08:24,840 --> 00:08:26,400
Speaker 5: reason that he's like, I don't know if I can

138
00:08:26,440 --> 00:08:29,480
Speaker 5: help these ladies, You've got to look at the context

139
00:08:29,480 --> 00:08:29,960
Speaker 5: of the time.

140
00:08:30,240 --> 00:08:34,120
Speaker 1: There had been no cure for this stuff. So before we.

141
00:08:34,040 --> 00:08:39,040
Speaker 5: Get into how Sims pivoted to gynecology from his general practice,

142
00:08:39,080 --> 00:08:44,079
Speaker 5: you have to understand the context of vesica vaginal fistulus

143
00:08:44,200 --> 00:08:47,800
Speaker 5: because it is horrific. So we've already hinted at the

144
00:08:47,800 --> 00:08:53,800
Speaker 5: fact that they are caused by prolonged and obstructed labor. Basically,

145
00:08:53,840 --> 00:08:55,839
Speaker 5: what happens is when the fetus won't fit through the

146
00:08:55,880 --> 00:08:58,400
Speaker 5: birth canal. I hope no one's eating, by the way,

147
00:08:58,679 --> 00:09:00,199
Speaker 5: because this is brutal. Well.

148
00:09:00,200 --> 00:09:01,559
Speaker 1: I literally when I was reading this.

149
00:09:01,559 --> 00:09:04,679
Speaker 5: Christian because what I've included in our notes today is

150
00:09:04,720 --> 00:09:07,439
Speaker 5: not anywhere near the full picture. I just hit the

151
00:09:07,480 --> 00:09:10,480
Speaker 5: high points because I literally got lightheaded reading about this. Yeah,

152
00:09:10,520 --> 00:09:13,679
Speaker 5: graphic details ahead from Yeah, there's like mentions of like

153
00:09:13,880 --> 00:09:17,320
Speaker 5: bone plates grinding. I left that out, Okay, So basically,

154
00:09:17,320 --> 00:09:19,320
Speaker 5: the fetus won't fit through the birth canal and gets

155
00:09:19,400 --> 00:09:21,080
Speaker 5: wedged with each contraction.

156
00:09:21,600 --> 00:09:23,840
Speaker 1: It is wedged harder and harder.

157
00:09:25,200 --> 00:09:29,520
Speaker 5: Eventually you get massive crush injuries because of this wedging

158
00:09:29,559 --> 00:09:32,120
Speaker 5: to the soft tissue of the pelvis, and the blood

159
00:09:32,160 --> 00:09:33,280
Speaker 5: supply gets cut off.

160
00:09:33,640 --> 00:09:39,080
Speaker 1: The fetus suffocates days later, days later.

161
00:09:39,120 --> 00:09:41,480
Speaker 5: Because of where we are in our scientific and medical

162
00:09:41,559 --> 00:09:46,600
Speaker 5: history at this point, the fetus, having been left where

163
00:09:46,600 --> 00:09:50,959
Speaker 5: it is, it finally slides out, as does dead tissue

164
00:09:51,000 --> 00:09:54,560
Speaker 5: from the woman's injured pelvis that is secreted, and once

165
00:09:54,640 --> 00:10:00,839
Speaker 5: that's secreted, a fistilliforms. The woman then experiences a complete

166
00:10:00,920 --> 00:10:04,240
Speaker 5: loss of urinary and in a woman like a narcist case,

167
00:10:04,320 --> 00:10:09,000
Speaker 5: sometimes fecal control, often in addition to horrific side effects

168
00:10:09,080 --> 00:10:14,440
Speaker 5: like secondary infertility, complete loss of vaginal function, recurring infections,

169
00:10:14,960 --> 00:10:17,880
Speaker 5: and you also have to take the mental health effects

170
00:10:17,880 --> 00:10:21,160
Speaker 5: of this into account. One of the huge effects, whether

171
00:10:21,160 --> 00:10:23,320
Speaker 5: it's a woman today experiencing it or a woman in

172
00:10:23,320 --> 00:10:26,600
Speaker 5: the nineteenth century, is depression because not only have you

173
00:10:26,679 --> 00:10:31,400
Speaker 5: lost a child and experienced super traumatic pain, but the

174
00:10:31,440 --> 00:10:36,720
Speaker 5: fact that you are constantly experiencing urinary and fecal loss,

175
00:10:37,200 --> 00:10:40,400
Speaker 5: you end up being an outcast. You face huge stigma

176
00:10:40,840 --> 00:10:43,360
Speaker 5: because you can't control your bowels, you can't control your

177
00:10:43,360 --> 00:10:46,560
Speaker 5: bladder and you smell, which then of course contributes to

178
00:10:46,640 --> 00:10:49,400
Speaker 5: a loss of dignity and self esteem. And some of

179
00:10:49,440 --> 00:10:52,840
Speaker 5: these women did end up killing themselves because of this condition,

180
00:10:53,000 --> 00:10:55,760
Speaker 5: and so it was a huge deal for women at

181
00:10:55,760 --> 00:10:56,079
Speaker 5: this time.

182
00:10:56,160 --> 00:10:58,559
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it was completely debilitating, to the point

183
00:10:58,640 --> 00:11:03,520
Speaker 4: that in study that we were reading, one of the

184
00:11:03,559 --> 00:11:06,280
Speaker 4: only things really that some of these women could do

185
00:11:06,480 --> 00:11:10,400
Speaker 4: would be to essentially sit on a chamber pot, because

186
00:11:11,280 --> 00:11:13,560
Speaker 4: I mean, they couldn't really go anywhere. They were constantly

187
00:11:13,640 --> 00:11:16,560
Speaker 4: ruining their clothes. I mean, they couldn't do anything. And

188
00:11:16,600 --> 00:11:19,200
Speaker 4: we should note that this is still officials are still

189
00:11:19,480 --> 00:11:22,120
Speaker 4: a major healthcare issue for a lot of women in

190
00:11:22,160 --> 00:11:26,800
Speaker 4: developing nations too. But back to the nineteenth century, this

191
00:11:27,000 --> 00:11:29,600
Speaker 4: wasn't uncommon at all, partially because of.

192
00:11:30,600 --> 00:11:32,440
Speaker 3: Lackluster maternity care.

193
00:11:33,000 --> 00:11:37,480
Speaker 4: But like you said, it was catastrophic, and in eighteen

194
00:11:37,559 --> 00:11:41,880
Speaker 4: forty seven, a French surgeon reported the medical community hadn't.

195
00:11:41,640 --> 00:11:44,400
Speaker 3: Heard of a single case where a.

196
00:11:44,320 --> 00:11:49,679
Speaker 4: Woman was successfully treated, and physicians were quite aware of

197
00:11:49,720 --> 00:11:51,640
Speaker 4: the debilitating effects of this condition.

198
00:11:51,960 --> 00:11:54,360
Speaker 5: An eighteen fifty seven report that was delivered at the

199
00:11:54,360 --> 00:11:59,400
Speaker 5: Georgia State Medical Society included the description that most of

200
00:11:59,440 --> 00:12:05,199
Speaker 5: the other physical evils of life sink into utter insignificance

201
00:12:05,360 --> 00:12:11,680
Speaker 5: because of the constant pain and mental trauma that the

202
00:12:11,720 --> 00:12:15,440
Speaker 5: woman has to experience. And so it's against this backdrop

203
00:12:15,480 --> 00:12:18,560
Speaker 5: you have a physician with no real reputation to speak of,

204
00:12:19,240 --> 00:12:23,280
Speaker 5: and you've got this terrible common condition with no cure,

205
00:12:24,000 --> 00:12:28,400
Speaker 5: that Sims ends up pivoting to gynecology. He's going out

206
00:12:28,440 --> 00:12:31,240
Speaker 5: in his rounds. One day, he's on his horse. He's

207
00:12:31,280 --> 00:12:35,240
Speaker 5: going out to treat people all over the region, and

208
00:12:35,679 --> 00:12:38,720
Speaker 5: he gets word of a middle aged white woman named

209
00:12:38,800 --> 00:12:41,240
Speaker 5: missus Meryll who'd been thrown from her horse.

210
00:12:41,280 --> 00:12:43,400
Speaker 1: She'd experienced an injury. He needed to come right away

211
00:12:43,400 --> 00:12:43,720
Speaker 1: in treater.

212
00:12:43,920 --> 00:12:46,520
Speaker 5: So Sims goes to take care of her and realizes

213
00:12:46,600 --> 00:12:51,320
Speaker 5: that Meryl has sustained a pelvic injury and her uterus.

214
00:12:50,960 --> 00:12:52,080
Speaker 3: Is out of place.

215
00:12:52,200 --> 00:12:55,240
Speaker 5: And now at this point, obviously he hadn't yet started

216
00:12:55,280 --> 00:12:59,480
Speaker 5: his focus on gynecological issues. And in his autobiography, which

217
00:12:59,520 --> 00:13:02,560
Speaker 5: I ended up really getting sucked into because did I

218
00:13:02,559 --> 00:13:05,319
Speaker 5: mention he was a self promoter, it's a really interesting

219
00:13:05,360 --> 00:13:06,640
Speaker 5: time capsule of a read.

220
00:13:07,840 --> 00:13:08,560
Speaker 1: He wrote.

221
00:13:09,440 --> 00:13:12,280
Speaker 5: If there was anything I hated, it was investigating the

222
00:13:12,400 --> 00:13:15,640
Speaker 5: organs of the female pelvis. But this poor woman was

223
00:13:15,679 --> 00:13:18,040
Speaker 5: in such a condition that I was obliged to find

224
00:13:18,080 --> 00:13:22,240
Speaker 5: out what was the matter with her? How chivalrous, so nice,

225
00:13:22,360 --> 00:13:25,120
Speaker 5: so nice, and find out he did.

226
00:13:35,360 --> 00:13:40,000
Speaker 4: So what Simms did was have Missus Merrill squat on

227
00:13:40,040 --> 00:13:43,960
Speaker 4: her bed under a sheet her modesty, and he inserted

228
00:13:44,080 --> 00:13:47,480
Speaker 4: two fingers into her vagina, and by doing that he

229
00:13:47,640 --> 00:13:52,960
Speaker 4: was able to reposition the uterus and she immediately experienced relief.

230
00:13:53,040 --> 00:13:57,600
Speaker 4: And Caroline, I don't quick aside reading that, Like, I

231
00:13:57,600 --> 00:13:58,000
Speaker 4: didn't know.

232
00:13:57,920 --> 00:14:00,000
Speaker 3: It was so easy to reposition a uterus.

233
00:14:00,400 --> 00:14:03,800
Speaker 5: Well, apparently there's lots of pushing and pulling involved, okay,

234
00:14:04,080 --> 00:14:07,480
Speaker 5: And there was something about the position that helped introduce

235
00:14:07,600 --> 00:14:12,680
Speaker 5: air into the vaginal canal, so like you get puffed.

236
00:14:12,400 --> 00:14:13,199
Speaker 1: Up like a balloon.

237
00:14:13,760 --> 00:14:18,160
Speaker 5: And I say this because literally, in his autobiography he

238
00:14:18,280 --> 00:14:22,840
Speaker 5: describes how she massively queafed when she then lay down

239
00:14:22,880 --> 00:14:26,120
Speaker 5: on the bed. And I'm not even saying that as

240
00:14:26,200 --> 00:14:28,680
Speaker 5: like a I'm literally saying that.

241
00:14:28,600 --> 00:14:32,760
Speaker 1: This was his Eureka moment. A quif A quif proved

242
00:14:32,760 --> 00:14:34,000
Speaker 1: to be a Eureka moment.

243
00:14:34,240 --> 00:14:41,160
Speaker 4: Yeah, So thanks too, Missus Merrill and her therapeutic queef

244
00:14:42,080 --> 00:14:46,000
Speaker 4: Jay Marian sims that, you know what, maybe this similar

245
00:14:46,280 --> 00:14:48,720
Speaker 4: positioning that gave him that kind of access to the

246
00:14:48,800 --> 00:14:53,520
Speaker 4: uterus could be helpful to treat Betsy in an arca.

247
00:14:53,920 --> 00:14:57,200
Speaker 4: So he then bought and bent a silver spoon with

248
00:14:57,280 --> 00:15:00,680
Speaker 4: his mind, like in the matrix, not really. He bent

249
00:15:00,720 --> 00:15:04,000
Speaker 4: the silver spoon, which was kind of like a a

250
00:15:04,000 --> 00:15:09,680
Speaker 4: prototype or a speculum, and brings Betsy in to examine her,

251
00:15:09,760 --> 00:15:14,120
Speaker 4: and he said, quote, I saw everything as no man

252
00:15:14,240 --> 00:15:15,680
Speaker 4: had ever seen before.

253
00:15:16,400 --> 00:15:17,040
Speaker 1: Yeah.

254
00:15:17,200 --> 00:15:19,160
Speaker 5: I mean just when you're down there as a tourist,

255
00:15:19,440 --> 00:15:22,720
Speaker 5: you typically don't see quite as much. But he with

256
00:15:22,920 --> 00:15:28,240
Speaker 5: his prototype speculum, clearly saw the outline of Betsy's fistula

257
00:15:28,640 --> 00:15:31,160
Speaker 5: and was like, it just looks like a tear and

258
00:15:31,240 --> 00:15:34,480
Speaker 5: some fabric. Why can't why can't we fix that? And

259
00:15:34,760 --> 00:15:40,920
Speaker 5: years later he would write again questionable, I thought only

260
00:15:41,040 --> 00:15:44,760
Speaker 5: of relieving the loveliest of God's creation of one of

261
00:15:44,800 --> 00:15:48,720
Speaker 5: the most loathsome maladies that can possibly befall poor human nature.

262
00:15:49,160 --> 00:15:51,320
Speaker 5: I felt that I'd had a mission of divine origin.

263
00:15:51,400 --> 00:15:55,280
Speaker 5: I could not have ceased my labors if I had tried.

264
00:15:55,520 --> 00:15:57,480
Speaker 5: And I'm like, okay, let's think about the context of

265
00:15:57,560 --> 00:15:59,400
Speaker 5: the time again, right, because we can never forget context.

266
00:15:59,480 --> 00:15:59,920
Speaker 1: This is meant.

267
00:16:01,720 --> 00:16:05,560
Speaker 5: This is a white slave owner from the South dealing

268
00:16:05,600 --> 00:16:09,960
Speaker 5: with enslaved women who were traumatized by childbirth and pain.

269
00:16:10,560 --> 00:16:14,000
Speaker 5: And he previously was like ew lady parts, and suddenly

270
00:16:14,000 --> 00:16:16,800
Speaker 5: he's talking about the loveliest of God's creatures, and he

271
00:16:16,880 --> 00:16:22,240
Speaker 5: had no motivation beyond helping the loveliest of God's creatures.

272
00:16:22,320 --> 00:16:24,640
Speaker 3: I am making my most skeptical face right now.

273
00:16:24,680 --> 00:16:26,400
Speaker 5: She sure is, I mean, because that's quite a change

274
00:16:26,440 --> 00:16:31,360
Speaker 5: from his earlier position. So anyway, through all of these

275
00:16:31,400 --> 00:16:35,640
Speaker 5: Eureka moments, Sims ends up writing to slave owners around

276
00:16:35,680 --> 00:16:40,240
Speaker 5: the region to find cases of previously ignored or untreated

277
00:16:40,320 --> 00:16:42,080
Speaker 5: vesico vaginal fistulas.

278
00:16:42,760 --> 00:16:46,800
Speaker 4: So at one point he writes to the man who

279
00:16:47,520 --> 00:16:50,640
Speaker 4: technically owned a Narka and Betsy, said, if you will

280
00:16:50,680 --> 00:16:54,200
Speaker 4: give me Anarka and Betsy for experiment, I agree to

281
00:16:54,240 --> 00:16:58,000
Speaker 4: perform no experiment or operation on either of them to

282
00:16:58,120 --> 00:17:01,720
Speaker 4: endanger their lives, and will not charge a cent for

283
00:17:01,920 --> 00:17:05,240
Speaker 4: keeping them, but you must pay their taxes and clothe them.

284
00:17:05,520 --> 00:17:08,840
Speaker 4: I will keep them at my expense. Oh, just the

285
00:17:09,240 --> 00:17:14,040
Speaker 4: language of bodies's properties is overwhelming, and essentially what he

286
00:17:14,080 --> 00:17:17,679
Speaker 4: did was rent Anarca and.

287
00:17:17,600 --> 00:17:20,120
Speaker 1: Betsy and like twelve other women too.

288
00:17:20,520 --> 00:17:26,560
Speaker 4: I'm it's it's hard to fathom, honestly. So he paid

289
00:17:26,600 --> 00:17:30,000
Speaker 4: taxes on them for the years that he was essentially

290
00:17:30,280 --> 00:17:33,639
Speaker 4: renting them, but he did complain about how it was

291
00:17:33,680 --> 00:17:36,960
Speaker 4: an enormous tax for a young doctor in a country practice.

292
00:17:37,200 --> 00:17:40,320
Speaker 3: Yeah, get it, get out of your doctor sims.

293
00:17:40,400 --> 00:17:43,040
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean it really, it really would be the

294
00:17:43,080 --> 00:17:46,119
Speaker 5: same as someone complaining about property taxes.

295
00:17:46,280 --> 00:17:48,120
Speaker 1: For him, that was that was the tone it took.

296
00:17:48,200 --> 00:17:51,119
Speaker 5: And so anyway, within three months of reaching out to

297
00:17:51,200 --> 00:17:54,440
Speaker 5: all of these slave owners, he had started his experimental

298
00:17:54,480 --> 00:17:59,080
Speaker 5: therapeutic surgeries on Betsy Anarka and several other women at

299
00:17:59,119 --> 00:18:01,280
Speaker 5: this small house Spittle that he had built behind his

300
00:18:01,440 --> 00:18:05,480
Speaker 5: house for this specific purpose. And one of those first

301
00:18:05,480 --> 00:18:08,840
Speaker 5: operations was on a woman named Lucy, who also had

302
00:18:08,880 --> 00:18:11,680
Speaker 5: a really bad case of fistula. Part of her bladder

303
00:18:11,760 --> 00:18:16,600
Speaker 5: was entirely gone, and when the man who owned Lucy

304
00:18:16,800 --> 00:18:19,720
Speaker 5: sent her two Sims, he really wasn't sure again that

305
00:18:19,800 --> 00:18:20,440
Speaker 5: he could help.

306
00:18:20,520 --> 00:18:22,160
Speaker 1: He wrote, she was very.

307
00:18:22,040 --> 00:18:25,520
Speaker 5: Much disappointed for her condition was loathsome and she was

308
00:18:25,560 --> 00:18:29,760
Speaker 5: in hopes that she could be cured. And during her

309
00:18:29,800 --> 00:18:33,600
Speaker 5: surgery he said that was before the days of anesthetics,

310
00:18:33,640 --> 00:18:35,920
Speaker 5: he wrote, and the poor girl on her knees bore

311
00:18:36,000 --> 00:18:40,159
Speaker 5: the operation with great heroism and bravery. I succeeded in

312
00:18:40,200 --> 00:18:42,439
Speaker 5: closing the fistula in about an hour's time, which was

313
00:18:42,480 --> 00:18:46,640
Speaker 5: considered to be very good work. Vanessa Northington Gamble, who's

314
00:18:46,680 --> 00:18:50,159
Speaker 5: a doctor in medical historian at George Washington University.

315
00:18:49,640 --> 00:18:50,600
Speaker 1: Has some quibbles.

316
00:18:51,000 --> 00:18:53,720
Speaker 5: She writes, or she told shankra Vedantam in that Hidden

317
00:18:53,720 --> 00:19:00,360
Speaker 5: Brain piece, listen, this was very painful, and ye would

318
00:19:00,440 --> 00:19:04,080
Speaker 5: Sims would go on to say that Lucy felt as

319
00:19:04,119 --> 00:19:06,080
Speaker 5: if she were going to die, and that she cried

320
00:19:06,119 --> 00:19:08,359
Speaker 5: out in pain so much because of these surgeries. And

321
00:19:08,400 --> 00:19:12,840
Speaker 5: it's like, well, obviously this is insanely painful and with

322
00:19:12,880 --> 00:19:15,159
Speaker 5: no anesthesia. I mean, I can't imagine. It makes me

323
00:19:15,240 --> 00:19:19,920
Speaker 5: like go pale just thinking about it. And it speaks

324
00:19:20,000 --> 00:19:23,800
Speaker 5: to Sims's quote speaks to something that we will address

325
00:19:23,840 --> 00:19:26,159
Speaker 5: more as we go through this episode. But it speaks

326
00:19:26,240 --> 00:19:32,080
Speaker 5: to the assumption that black women could sustain more pain

327
00:19:32,760 --> 00:19:36,399
Speaker 5: than delicate, flower white ladies. And so there was just

328
00:19:36,440 --> 00:19:40,520
Speaker 5: this assumption that he held, as did pretty much every

329
00:19:40,520 --> 00:19:43,400
Speaker 5: other physician in the country at the time, that like, Oh,

330
00:19:43,440 --> 00:19:45,760
Speaker 5: it's okay, they'll just like grin and bear it when

331
00:19:45,760 --> 00:19:47,800
Speaker 5: we expose them to so much pain.

332
00:19:48,640 --> 00:19:53,879
Speaker 4: But of course, Sims didn't come up with a magical

333
00:19:54,000 --> 00:19:57,760
Speaker 4: cure overnight or in like that hour that he claims

334
00:19:57,840 --> 00:19:59,720
Speaker 4: it took to operate.

335
00:19:59,680 --> 00:20:00,399
Speaker 3: On life Lucy.

336
00:20:00,720 --> 00:20:04,800
Speaker 4: There were endless failures and repeated surgeries again let us

337
00:20:04,840 --> 00:20:06,959
Speaker 4: emphasize without any anesthesia.

338
00:20:07,640 --> 00:20:09,360
Speaker 3: And he writes about how.

339
00:20:09,760 --> 00:20:13,119
Speaker 4: At last I performed operations only with the assistance of

340
00:20:13,160 --> 00:20:16,359
Speaker 4: the patients himself, basically saying like all of his doctor

341
00:20:16,440 --> 00:20:20,359
Speaker 4: friends were just tired of being there and watching him

342
00:20:20,440 --> 00:20:21,320
Speaker 4: try and fail.

343
00:20:21,880 --> 00:20:23,160
Speaker 3: And ps let's keep.

344
00:20:23,040 --> 00:20:27,320
Speaker 4: In mind too that these women were completely naked and

345
00:20:27,359 --> 00:20:31,000
Speaker 4: exposed while this group of white male doctors would be

346
00:20:31,920 --> 00:20:33,240
Speaker 4: watching them.

347
00:20:33,520 --> 00:20:36,560
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, after years of watching and assisting with

348
00:20:36,600 --> 00:20:39,080
Speaker 5: these surgeries, these even these fellow doctors.

349
00:20:38,760 --> 00:20:40,800
Speaker 1: Were like I'm out, Like I can't, I can't do

350
00:20:40,880 --> 00:20:41,400
Speaker 1: this anymore.

351
00:20:41,400 --> 00:20:45,200
Speaker 5: And so Sims did train these enslaved women as his

352
00:20:45,240 --> 00:20:49,159
Speaker 5: surgical assistance, and they helped him operate on their fellow patients.

353
00:20:50,920 --> 00:20:51,720
Speaker 3: And he gets to it.

354
00:20:51,800 --> 00:20:54,359
Speaker 5: Sims gets to a point where he pauses for a

355
00:20:54,400 --> 00:20:56,879
Speaker 5: couple of weeks because he's so disheartened.

356
00:20:56,359 --> 00:20:57,760
Speaker 1: By all of these failures.

357
00:20:57,800 --> 00:21:01,479
Speaker 5: Again it's all about him, and so he's really mulling

358
00:21:01,520 --> 00:21:04,480
Speaker 5: over how to better suture these fishillas.

359
00:21:04,680 --> 00:21:06,880
Speaker 1: And he reports that in the.

360
00:21:06,800 --> 00:21:09,320
Speaker 5: Meantime, and this is something you will see in any

361
00:21:09,400 --> 00:21:12,800
Speaker 5: source about Sims, he reports that the women were quote

362
00:21:13,160 --> 00:21:15,639
Speaker 5: clamorous for him to get back to it. And on

363
00:21:15,680 --> 00:21:18,199
Speaker 5: the one hand, I feel like that is used to

364
00:21:18,400 --> 00:21:23,560
Speaker 5: justify a lot of brutality and awfulness and experimentation. But

365
00:21:23,680 --> 00:21:26,199
Speaker 5: on the other hand, like, yeah, I mean, if you

366
00:21:26,240 --> 00:21:28,280
Speaker 5: were suffering and here's this person who's like, I'm going

367
00:21:28,359 --> 00:21:30,840
Speaker 5: to cure you, I'd probably be like, hey, TikTok, can

368
00:21:30,880 --> 00:21:33,760
Speaker 5: we get back to it? So there you know, again

369
00:21:33,800 --> 00:21:36,440
Speaker 5: there are layers to it. But he ends up one

370
00:21:36,560 --> 00:21:40,040
Speaker 5: night getting the idea for a new technique. He tries

371
00:21:40,080 --> 00:21:44,320
Speaker 5: it on Lucy but it fails to Then he finally

372
00:21:44,320 --> 00:21:47,480
Speaker 5: gets the idea to use a fine silver thread once

373
00:21:47,520 --> 00:21:50,440
Speaker 5: he realized that the unsterilized silk thread that he was.

374
00:21:50,440 --> 00:21:51,760
Speaker 1: Using was part of the problem.

375
00:21:51,840 --> 00:21:54,359
Speaker 5: It was causing infections, and he had read about a

376
00:21:54,440 --> 00:21:59,280
Speaker 5: Virginia surgeon who had used lead sutures. So in spring

377
00:21:59,320 --> 00:22:03,159
Speaker 5: eighteen forty, he tries his new method on a narka.

378
00:22:03,560 --> 00:22:08,399
Speaker 5: And it's worth mentioning that this was a Narca's thirtieth

379
00:22:09,520 --> 00:22:16,959
Speaker 5: unanesthetized surgery. Fortunately for everyone involved, it worked beautifully. She

380
00:22:17,119 --> 00:22:20,760
Speaker 5: healed really well, and two weeks later Betsy's and Lucy's

381
00:22:20,760 --> 00:22:24,280
Speaker 5: fistulas had healed and closed as well with this new technique.

382
00:22:24,680 --> 00:22:26,720
Speaker 4: And the thing is, I mean, if Jay Mary and

383
00:22:26,760 --> 00:22:31,159
Speaker 4: Simms were a doctor today, he would be all over

384
00:22:31,600 --> 00:22:32,399
Speaker 4: social media.

385
00:22:32,440 --> 00:22:34,160
Speaker 3: He would be live tweeting all of this stuff.

386
00:22:34,200 --> 00:22:38,119
Speaker 4: I mean, the guy was so driven by self promotion,

387
00:22:38,280 --> 00:22:40,520
Speaker 4: even to the point you could argue of like self branding,

388
00:22:40,560 --> 00:22:46,520
Speaker 4: because he wanted to revolutionize medicine. I mean, he specifically

389
00:22:46,520 --> 00:22:49,040
Speaker 4: took on these cases because he wanted to get that

390
00:22:49,160 --> 00:22:49,840
Speaker 4: kind of fame.

391
00:22:49,880 --> 00:22:51,720
Speaker 3: And this was something that Jeffrey S.

392
00:22:51,720 --> 00:22:54,159
Speaker 4: Sartin wrote about in two thousand and four in the

393
00:22:54,200 --> 00:22:58,600
Speaker 4: Southern Medical Journal about how you know. Sims even said

394
00:22:59,200 --> 00:23:01,160
Speaker 4: I had made perhaps as one of the most important

395
00:23:01,160 --> 00:23:04,960
Speaker 4: discoveries of the age for the relief of suffering humanity.

396
00:23:05,119 --> 00:23:08,119
Speaker 3: And in a way he's right. I mean, it was

397
00:23:08,200 --> 00:23:09,560
Speaker 3: a massive breakthrough.

398
00:23:09,640 --> 00:23:13,720
Speaker 4: But there's that question of was he actually concerned with

399
00:23:13,840 --> 00:23:17,399
Speaker 4: the health and safety of anarca? Betsy Lucy and the

400
00:23:17,440 --> 00:23:21,600
Speaker 4: other women that he experimentally operated on, or were they,

401
00:23:21,960 --> 00:23:25,320
Speaker 4: as doctor Graham J. Barker Benfield would argue in the

402
00:23:25,400 --> 00:23:31,040
Speaker 4: nineteen seventies, just guinea pigs to advance this white dude's career,

403
00:23:31,080 --> 00:23:33,720
Speaker 4: because there's no evidence that he ever followed up with

404
00:23:33,760 --> 00:23:37,240
Speaker 4: the women and no data about the rest of the women.

405
00:23:37,440 --> 00:23:42,600
Speaker 4: And Sean Cravedantam says on Hidden Brain quote he wanted

406
00:23:42,680 --> 00:23:46,600
Speaker 4: to be a trailblazing researcher, and these women, their bodies

407
00:23:46,880 --> 00:23:50,480
Speaker 4: became props in his journey of scientific discovery.

408
00:23:51,359 --> 00:23:52,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.

409
00:23:52,400 --> 00:23:57,399
Speaker 5: So on the one hand, we get incredibly valuable medical

410
00:23:57,440 --> 00:24:00,119
Speaker 5: advancements that will go on to change the lives of

411
00:24:00,160 --> 00:24:04,240
Speaker 5: callous women, but it's done on the back, so to speak,

412
00:24:05,320 --> 00:24:09,159
Speaker 5: of enslaved women who essentially were at their width end,

413
00:24:09,200 --> 00:24:11,359
Speaker 5: who had no other options available to them.

414
00:24:11,760 --> 00:24:13,800
Speaker 4: And of course there's a lot more to this story

415
00:24:13,840 --> 00:24:15,600
Speaker 4: that we're going to talk about when we come right

416
00:24:15,640 --> 00:24:17,439
Speaker 4: back from a quick break.

417
00:24:21,520 --> 00:24:25,720
Speaker 5: So, Kristin, I finally got my act together and went

418
00:24:25,840 --> 00:24:28,240
Speaker 5: and used square space to.

419
00:24:28,320 --> 00:24:31,880
Speaker 1: Build the Caroline Oven Hub on the Internet.

420
00:24:32,000 --> 00:24:32,840
Speaker 3: Oh I'm so excited.

421
00:24:32,920 --> 00:24:35,879
Speaker 5: Yes, I built a website finally and it was super

422
00:24:35,880 --> 00:24:38,040
Speaker 5: easy and I knew that using squarespace with all of

423
00:24:38,080 --> 00:24:41,159
Speaker 5: its amazing templates would be super easy, but it was

424
00:24:41,200 --> 00:24:45,600
Speaker 5: even more smooth sailing than I expected. And at first

425
00:24:45,640 --> 00:24:47,480
Speaker 5: I wasn't sure what template to pick because there are

426
00:24:47,480 --> 00:24:48,960
Speaker 5: a lot of great ones to choose from. I was

427
00:24:49,000 --> 00:24:51,080
Speaker 5: able to sort of mix and match and mess around

428
00:24:51,119 --> 00:24:54,160
Speaker 5: with the whole shebang until I figured out what worked

429
00:24:54,280 --> 00:24:56,720
Speaker 5: best for me. And I'm really happy with it, and

430
00:24:56,760 --> 00:24:57,280
Speaker 5: you love it.

431
00:24:57,640 --> 00:24:58,359
Speaker 6: I do love it.

432
00:24:58,520 --> 00:25:01,159
Speaker 5: Oh again, It's like I said, it's just pictures of

433
00:25:01,160 --> 00:25:02,960
Speaker 5: Corgis and ties wonderful.

434
00:25:03,119 --> 00:25:06,199
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, listeners, if you want to do what Carolyn

435
00:25:06,280 --> 00:25:08,520
Speaker 4: and I have done and build your website, because who

436
00:25:08,560 --> 00:25:10,960
Speaker 4: doesn't need a website these days? Sure you need to

437
00:25:11,000 --> 00:25:14,480
Speaker 4: head over to squarespace dot com and if you use

438
00:25:14,520 --> 00:25:18,160
Speaker 4: our promo code mom Stuff, you can get ten percent

439
00:25:18,280 --> 00:25:23,560
Speaker 4: off your first purchase with a free domain. So really,

440
00:25:24,080 --> 00:25:26,520
Speaker 4: why shouldn't you do it? Because you don't have to

441
00:25:26,520 --> 00:25:30,320
Speaker 4: pay until you are ready to launch that website. So

442
00:25:30,600 --> 00:25:33,920
Speaker 4: head over to squarespace dot com and use the code

443
00:25:33,920 --> 00:25:38,240
Speaker 4: Mom's Stuff or ten percent off and a free domain.

444
00:25:38,680 --> 00:25:39,680
Speaker 1: And now back to the show.

445
00:25:46,960 --> 00:25:49,919
Speaker 4: So at eighteen fifty three, Jamiary and Sims packs up

446
00:25:49,960 --> 00:25:53,920
Speaker 4: his bag and his family, and it's like, see you later, South.

447
00:25:53,720 --> 00:25:56,000
Speaker 3: I'm heading to New New York City.

448
00:25:56,480 --> 00:25:57,479
Speaker 1: New York City.

449
00:25:58,240 --> 00:26:03,399
Speaker 5: Yeah, and he immediately sets about establishing a mixed reputation,

450
00:26:04,119 --> 00:26:07,840
Speaker 5: as you would assume with somebody like this, like, oh good,

451
00:26:08,000 --> 00:26:10,879
Speaker 5: you're a really good doctor, but you're kind of a

452
00:26:10,960 --> 00:26:17,040
Speaker 5: douche so okay. Some historians and critics have suggested that

453
00:26:17,119 --> 00:26:20,680
Speaker 5: Sims left the South, not because, as he claimed, I'm

454
00:26:20,720 --> 00:26:23,119
Speaker 5: so sick, like I need to find a better climate

455
00:26:23,160 --> 00:26:27,200
Speaker 5: that suits my health better, but because of criticism over

456
00:26:27,280 --> 00:26:31,960
Speaker 5: quote immoral slave experiments, and as he was getting set

457
00:26:32,040 --> 00:26:35,320
Speaker 5: up in New York, he it is telling that he

458
00:26:35,400 --> 00:26:39,680
Speaker 5: omitted some pretty important details of records of those groundbreaking

459
00:26:39,720 --> 00:26:43,200
Speaker 5: Southern surgeries. In both a paper on the topic and

460
00:26:43,359 --> 00:26:46,320
Speaker 5: a lecture he delivered, he referred to the women as

461
00:26:46,400 --> 00:26:50,840
Speaker 5: quote healthy young Negro women, leaving out the whole slave

462
00:26:50,960 --> 00:26:52,240
Speaker 5: bit and leaving out.

463
00:26:52,040 --> 00:26:54,480
Speaker 1: The whole part that no, they were not healthy, they were.

464
00:26:54,320 --> 00:26:58,960
Speaker 5: Desperate and also enslaved, and adding insult to injury. The

465
00:26:59,040 --> 00:27:02,800
Speaker 5: early illustrations accompanying his writing about the topic show the

466
00:27:02,840 --> 00:27:04,320
Speaker 5: patients as white.

467
00:27:04,520 --> 00:27:09,080
Speaker 4: Talk about some revisionist history. So in eighteen fifty five.

468
00:27:09,200 --> 00:27:13,280
Speaker 4: Just two years later, the Women's Hospital is established, and

469
00:27:13,320 --> 00:27:17,480
Speaker 4: it's a public and privately funded charity hospital exclusively for

470
00:27:17,640 --> 00:27:19,400
Speaker 4: quote female disorders.

471
00:27:19,640 --> 00:27:22,000
Speaker 3: I mean in this from the dude who was so

472
00:27:22,240 --> 00:27:24,879
Speaker 3: like ugh Lady Pelvis's.

473
00:27:25,160 --> 00:27:28,879
Speaker 4: And Sims earns fame through the hospital which did primarily

474
00:27:28,920 --> 00:27:30,520
Speaker 4: treat Irish immigrant women.

475
00:27:30,560 --> 00:27:35,200
Speaker 3: But again he got the rumormill going with questions.

476
00:27:34,760 --> 00:27:39,959
Speaker 4: About these experiments on these often destitute immigrant women and

477
00:27:40,200 --> 00:27:44,919
Speaker 4: whether they were happening with informed consent going.

478
00:27:44,680 --> 00:27:46,000
Speaker 3: On right exactly.

479
00:27:46,960 --> 00:27:50,479
Speaker 5: And during the Civil War he actually travels to Europe

480
00:27:50,600 --> 00:27:53,359
Speaker 5: to get out of the country and in eighteen sixty

481
00:27:53,440 --> 00:27:58,520
Speaker 5: three treats Empress Eugenie, wife of Napoleon the Third, for

482
00:27:58,760 --> 00:28:03,240
Speaker 5: a fistula, and she, by the way, he performed the

483
00:28:03,240 --> 00:28:07,080
Speaker 5: surgery on her while she was under chloroform, so she

484
00:28:07,720 --> 00:28:12,440
Speaker 5: was anesthetized. And again sort of getting to that mixed

485
00:28:12,480 --> 00:28:15,240
Speaker 5: reputation in the early post war period, although he had

486
00:28:15,280 --> 00:28:18,639
Speaker 5: owned slaves, he had defended the system of slavery.

487
00:28:18,359 --> 00:28:20,760
Speaker 1: And written many a poor word.

488
00:28:20,640 --> 00:28:24,679
Speaker 5: About black people in letters to colleagues. He urged the

489
00:28:24,720 --> 00:28:27,240
Speaker 5: South after the Civil War to accept the fifteenth Amendment

490
00:28:27,280 --> 00:28:30,600
Speaker 5: and just move on. I really am getting the impression

491
00:28:30,960 --> 00:28:33,359
Speaker 5: that this guy, like it's not that he necessarily.

492
00:28:32,880 --> 00:28:35,560
Speaker 1: Has principles right, oh god, It's not.

493
00:28:35,520 --> 00:28:38,800
Speaker 5: Like he sticks by like the awful system of slavery

494
00:28:38,920 --> 00:28:43,200
Speaker 5: or you know, wholeheartedly sticks by the freedom of the slaves.

495
00:28:43,240 --> 00:28:45,440
Speaker 1: He's just like, can we just like whatever?

496
00:28:45,800 --> 00:28:49,800
Speaker 5: You know, Like he's not genuinely supporting the women that

497
00:28:49,840 --> 00:28:52,360
Speaker 5: he performed surgeries on. It's more like, I don't know,

498
00:28:52,360 --> 00:28:54,479
Speaker 5: can I just get a better reputation out of this stuff?

499
00:28:54,720 --> 00:28:58,840
Speaker 5: He's literally only looking out for himself and any like qualms,

500
00:28:58,880 --> 00:29:02,200
Speaker 5: quipples and arguments about freeing the slaves first of all

501
00:29:02,200 --> 00:29:03,720
Speaker 5: and then giving them voting rights.

502
00:29:03,720 --> 00:29:05,640
Speaker 1: He was just like, I don't care. You guys are

503
00:29:05,640 --> 00:29:06,960
Speaker 1: like really bugging me with all of this.

504
00:29:07,160 --> 00:29:09,680
Speaker 4: How is this helping me at the end of the

505
00:29:09,760 --> 00:29:13,040
Speaker 4: day exactly? And I mean because of this, like people

506
00:29:13,160 --> 00:29:16,080
Speaker 4: really did not like Jay Mary and Sims the dude

507
00:29:16,120 --> 00:29:19,600
Speaker 4: slash the douche. And by the way, Quick Smanty's side

508
00:29:19,640 --> 00:29:24,440
Speaker 4: note use of douche as a pejorative is totally validated because,

509
00:29:24,880 --> 00:29:29,000
Speaker 4: as we know from the episode Bag, the douche douche

510
00:29:29,240 --> 00:29:34,600
Speaker 4: is a horrible concoction that women were tricked into, you know,

511
00:29:34,720 --> 00:29:36,560
Speaker 4: inserting into their vaginal canals.

512
00:29:36,560 --> 00:29:39,200
Speaker 3: So it is an accurate description in a lot of ways.

513
00:29:39,360 --> 00:29:42,280
Speaker 5: Yeah, of this guy, he's a terrible thing that was

514
00:29:42,280 --> 00:29:44,960
Speaker 5: in women's vaginas.

515
00:29:43,920 --> 00:29:46,320
Speaker 3: So true, he's the ultimate douche.

516
00:29:47,600 --> 00:29:53,560
Speaker 4: So nonetheless, his book Clinical Notes on Uterine Surgery was

517
00:29:54,000 --> 00:29:56,959
Speaker 4: widely read, and it took a straightforward approach to women's

518
00:29:57,000 --> 00:29:58,840
Speaker 4: health and gynecological disorders.

519
00:29:59,200 --> 00:30:00,720
Speaker 3: And the books and phasis.

520
00:30:00,480 --> 00:30:06,360
Speaker 4: On sterrility treatment, particularly artificial insemination, was way ahead of

521
00:30:06,360 --> 00:30:06,760
Speaker 4: its time.

522
00:30:06,840 --> 00:30:07,800
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's great.

523
00:30:08,080 --> 00:30:09,840
Speaker 1: And then he totally MUCKs it up again.

524
00:30:10,280 --> 00:30:12,920
Speaker 5: And this is actually an interesting sminty side note for

525
00:30:13,000 --> 00:30:15,560
Speaker 5: those of you who listened to our episode on the

526
00:30:15,600 --> 00:30:19,840
Speaker 5: Marmorian Flock, the group of lady sculptors in Rome in

527
00:30:19,880 --> 00:30:20,880
Speaker 5: the nineteenth century.

528
00:30:21,880 --> 00:30:22,160
Speaker 6: Uh.

529
00:30:22,200 --> 00:30:27,040
Speaker 5: In eighteen seventy, the douche published a newspaper account of

530
00:30:27,080 --> 00:30:31,200
Speaker 5: his treatment of famous actress Charlotte Cushman. And now Cushman

531
00:30:32,160 --> 00:30:37,440
Speaker 5: was one of the primary patrons and benefactors.

532
00:30:36,760 --> 00:30:39,080
Speaker 1: Of these sculptor ladies.

533
00:30:40,000 --> 00:30:43,920
Speaker 5: Uh. But seriously, like a doctor publishing like, hey, guys,

534
00:30:43,960 --> 00:30:47,640
Speaker 5: I treated this famous lady. The New York Academy of

535
00:30:47,720 --> 00:30:50,920
Speaker 5: Medicine immediately was like, are you kidding me? They reprimanded

536
00:30:51,000 --> 00:30:56,160
Speaker 5: him formally for resorting to paid advertising and hello, breaking confidentiality.

537
00:30:56,440 --> 00:30:58,640
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean this guy totally again, Like I'm just

538
00:30:58,760 --> 00:31:02,400
Speaker 4: imagining how all he would be on Twitter, like, hey guys,

539
00:31:02,880 --> 00:31:06,640
Speaker 4: Jen Anniston just left my office hashtag winning.

540
00:31:07,560 --> 00:31:11,120
Speaker 5: And so in this decade of the eighteen seventies, you

541
00:31:11,200 --> 00:31:14,840
Speaker 5: have colleagues and the hospital board lobbing charges of unethical

542
00:31:14,920 --> 00:31:16,160
Speaker 5: experimentation at him.

543
00:31:16,360 --> 00:31:17,400
Speaker 1: And there's some like.

544
00:31:17,480 --> 00:31:20,320
Speaker 5: Awful and dismissive quote of his that I neglected to

545
00:31:20,360 --> 00:31:23,520
Speaker 5: include in the notes. But he's basically like the ladies,

546
00:31:23,800 --> 00:31:25,040
Speaker 5: meaning the hospital board.

547
00:31:25,040 --> 00:31:28,200
Speaker 1: He's like the ladies are at it again. Yeah, he

548
00:31:28,280 --> 00:31:29,640
Speaker 1: was just he was a joy.

549
00:31:30,160 --> 00:31:33,720
Speaker 5: In eighteen seventy six, hooray, he performs the first documented

550
00:31:33,760 --> 00:31:34,680
Speaker 5: gallbladder surgery.

551
00:31:34,760 --> 00:31:39,840
Speaker 4: I'm getting frustrated with his string of successes, like that's great,

552
00:31:40,120 --> 00:31:41,800
Speaker 4: first gallbladder surgery, yay.

553
00:31:41,840 --> 00:31:46,440
Speaker 5: But he also at the same time promoted now discredited

554
00:31:46,480 --> 00:31:50,680
Speaker 5: techniques like ovarian removal for various physical and psychosomatic conditions

555
00:31:51,000 --> 00:31:52,480
Speaker 5: termed hysterical diseases.

556
00:31:52,600 --> 00:31:53,600
Speaker 3: Anah, there we go.

557
00:31:53,640 --> 00:32:16,520
Speaker 6: They all floating uterusm.

558
00:32:05,480 --> 00:32:09,959
Speaker 4: So I mean, already I'm annoyed that he has any statues.

559
00:32:11,040 --> 00:32:12,800
Speaker 3: Take this at all?

560
00:32:13,200 --> 00:32:14,720
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, he was clearly no saint.

561
00:32:15,720 --> 00:32:19,080
Speaker 5: But what we want to get into is like, was

562
00:32:19,160 --> 00:32:21,640
Speaker 5: he evil? Capital eevil?

563
00:32:21,960 --> 00:32:24,320
Speaker 1: Has he been misrepresented? Is he simply a product of

564
00:32:24,360 --> 00:32:24,760
Speaker 1: his time?

565
00:32:24,920 --> 00:32:25,000
Speaker 4: Like?

566
00:32:25,520 --> 00:32:26,480
Speaker 1: What do we know about that?

567
00:32:26,680 --> 00:32:26,880
Speaker 3: Yeah?

568
00:32:26,880 --> 00:32:30,840
Speaker 4: I mean, like do does his do his personal views

569
00:32:30,880 --> 00:32:33,880
Speaker 4: and the way that he was able to make those

570
00:32:33,880 --> 00:32:39,640
Speaker 4: scientific discoveries? Does that discredit essentially those scientific discoveries?

571
00:32:39,720 --> 00:32:41,600
Speaker 3: You know what I mean? Like, does it literally knock

572
00:32:41,680 --> 00:32:42,760
Speaker 3: him off that pedestal?

573
00:32:43,680 --> 00:32:47,360
Speaker 4: And this is something that critics and supporters have argued

574
00:32:47,400 --> 00:32:52,400
Speaker 4: over because there's the argument that enslaved people could not

575
00:32:52,840 --> 00:32:55,800
Speaker 4: truly grant consent in the way we think of it today,

576
00:32:55,960 --> 00:33:02,280
Speaker 4: even if they fully understood the procedures and were indeed clamorous.

577
00:33:02,000 --> 00:33:03,720
Speaker 3: To be treated.

578
00:33:04,320 --> 00:33:07,800
Speaker 4: But they were a vulnerable population, no bones about it.

579
00:33:07,880 --> 00:33:09,920
Speaker 4: They were subject to the whims and wishes of the

580
00:33:09,960 --> 00:33:13,360
Speaker 4: people who owned them and rented them, in Sims's case,

581
00:33:14,000 --> 00:33:17,640
Speaker 4: like property, and who wanted to fix them not so

582
00:33:17,720 --> 00:33:20,480
Speaker 4: that they could be healthy and have a better quality

583
00:33:20,520 --> 00:33:23,160
Speaker 4: of life, but so that they could be put back

584
00:33:23,200 --> 00:33:23,720
Speaker 4: to work.

585
00:33:24,080 --> 00:33:26,360
Speaker 1: Right, Because you know, you have to keep in mind

586
00:33:27,840 --> 00:33:34,040
Speaker 1: that during the system of slavery, black women couldn't pop

587
00:33:34,080 --> 00:33:35,840
Speaker 1: out enough babies.

588
00:33:36,080 --> 00:33:40,360
Speaker 5: And once slavery is over, then you shift into black

589
00:33:40,400 --> 00:33:43,520
Speaker 5: people are having too many babies, as we will discuss

590
00:33:43,600 --> 00:33:47,000
Speaker 5: in our next episode. But yeah, I mean, they were

591
00:33:47,040 --> 00:33:50,840
Speaker 5: absolutely property. They were not human beings, whether it was

592
00:33:50,880 --> 00:33:53,840
Speaker 5: a doctor or a slave owner. And so if these

593
00:33:53,920 --> 00:33:59,080
Speaker 5: women desperate for relief were owned by Sims or on

594
00:33:59,120 --> 00:34:03,760
Speaker 5: some weird love, and could they have raised objections if

595
00:34:03,800 --> 00:34:06,160
Speaker 5: he did, in an arcist case, for instance, need to

596
00:34:06,200 --> 00:34:09,200
Speaker 5: operate thirty times. I mean, we'll never know because we

597
00:34:09,239 --> 00:34:12,799
Speaker 5: don't have records of these women's voices. They might have

598
00:34:12,920 --> 00:34:16,160
Speaker 5: wanted help, but it doesn't mean that they wanted the

599
00:34:16,239 --> 00:34:19,319
Speaker 5: degree of pain and suffering that they were exposed to

600
00:34:19,640 --> 00:34:25,640
Speaker 5: in repeated experimental surgeries. But you've got gynecologist and Sims

601
00:34:25,680 --> 00:34:30,120
Speaker 5: explainer slash apologists, depending on how you sm l. Lewis Walls,

602
00:34:30,160 --> 00:34:35,200
Speaker 5: who argues he's living today, he's a modern gynecologist. As

603
00:34:35,239 --> 00:34:39,440
Speaker 5: Sims did in his autobiography, that some treatment was better

604
00:34:39,480 --> 00:34:42,680
Speaker 5: than no treatment. Right, The women quote had only two

605
00:34:42,719 --> 00:34:46,160
Speaker 5: therapeutic choices, Walls rites. They could continue as they were

606
00:34:46,200 --> 00:34:48,920
Speaker 5: with whatever palliad of treatment might be provided, or they

607
00:34:48,960 --> 00:34:52,680
Speaker 5: could agree to undergo experimental surgical operations. That might offer

608
00:34:52,760 --> 00:34:55,800
Speaker 5: them some relief, perhaps even a total cure for their condition.

609
00:34:55,960 --> 00:35:01,000
Speaker 5: And Walls, who nowadays treats women in Appa with vesica

610
00:35:01,080 --> 00:35:05,040
Speaker 5: vaginal fistulas, says that these women are desperate for a

611
00:35:05,080 --> 00:35:08,680
Speaker 5: cure and will willingly submit to almost any therapy proposed

612
00:35:08,760 --> 00:35:11,040
Speaker 5: to them. And to that into several other things that

613
00:35:11,080 --> 00:35:14,719
Speaker 5: Walls says in the paper that we read that he wrote,

614
00:35:15,080 --> 00:35:20,440
Speaker 5: I have to say, does the modern perspective on vesica

615
00:35:20,520 --> 00:35:25,600
Speaker 5: vaginal fistula patients does it justify as Walls seems to

616
00:35:25,760 --> 00:35:29,840
Speaker 5: argue Sims's treatment of them. It seems to he seems

617
00:35:29,880 --> 00:35:33,799
Speaker 5: to argue that like you, guys, why are you making.

618
00:35:33,480 --> 00:35:35,719
Speaker 1: Stuff up about how awful he was?

619
00:35:35,960 --> 00:35:38,560
Speaker 3: And that like like.

620
00:35:38,480 --> 00:35:40,880
Speaker 5: You said, Kristin, I mean, yes, he made these amazing

621
00:35:40,880 --> 00:35:44,920
Speaker 5: discoveries that would help so many women, especially post advent

622
00:35:45,080 --> 00:35:49,160
Speaker 5: of anesthesia.

623
00:35:47,320 --> 00:35:50,919
Speaker 1: But were the means a justification for the ends?

624
00:35:50,960 --> 00:35:54,640
Speaker 5: And can Walls, with his experience, however, firsthand, can he

625
00:35:55,200 --> 00:35:57,239
Speaker 5: justify the things that Sims did?

626
00:35:57,280 --> 00:35:57,480
Speaker 4: I mean?

627
00:35:57,520 --> 00:36:01,719
Speaker 5: Walls also argues that Sims wrote about discussing the procedures

628
00:36:01,760 --> 00:36:05,799
Speaker 5: with patients and receiving their consent to undergo the procedures,

629
00:36:06,200 --> 00:36:09,759
Speaker 5: and he says that you basically have to assume that

630
00:36:09,800 --> 00:36:13,000
Speaker 5: these women cooperated because he's like, think about how delicate

631
00:36:13,040 --> 00:36:15,480
Speaker 5: these procedures were. If the women were forced into it,

632
00:36:15,960 --> 00:36:18,520
Speaker 5: you know, and they were thrashing around like trying to

633
00:36:18,560 --> 00:36:20,880
Speaker 5: get away, they would be even more injured.

634
00:36:20,920 --> 00:36:24,040
Speaker 1: And it's like, well can ha ah, Like I don't

635
00:36:24,080 --> 00:36:24,919
Speaker 1: know how you can.

636
00:36:25,160 --> 00:36:30,359
Speaker 5: Yes, they're absolutely delicate surgeries obviously, and you obviously don't

637
00:36:30,400 --> 00:36:34,279
Speaker 5: want to be moving around and like thrashing about when

638
00:36:34,320 --> 00:36:37,760
Speaker 5: someone's got a scalpel and some sutures in your vaginal canal.

639
00:36:39,080 --> 00:36:42,279
Speaker 5: But can you seriously make the argument that like, oh, yeah,

640
00:36:42,320 --> 00:36:43,720
Speaker 5: they were like totally.

641
00:36:43,320 --> 00:36:46,000
Speaker 1: Down for everything he was doing well, because I mean.

642
00:36:45,840 --> 00:36:49,200
Speaker 4: If they were to protest, then they could be punished,

643
00:36:49,880 --> 00:36:53,560
Speaker 4: you know, they could face a different kind of physical pain.

644
00:36:53,719 --> 00:36:56,840
Speaker 4: So it's a sketchy argument at best. And yeah, this

645
00:36:56,880 --> 00:37:03,640
Speaker 4: whole like machiavellian like medicine is it is honestly tough

646
00:37:03,840 --> 00:37:07,440
Speaker 4: to unravel because of the benefits, yes, that.

647
00:37:07,400 --> 00:37:11,279
Speaker 3: We do enjoy today as you.

648
00:37:11,239 --> 00:37:15,800
Speaker 4: Know, people who you know undergo modern obg U I

649
00:37:15,960 --> 00:37:19,280
Speaker 4: N treatments, you know, but you still have, of course,

650
00:37:19,360 --> 00:37:23,480
Speaker 4: like to that point, people like historian Harriet Washington, who

651
00:37:25,040 --> 00:37:29,520
Speaker 4: underscores the pain that these women went through the torment,

652
00:37:30,680 --> 00:37:35,600
Speaker 4: and if anything, it is a horrifying lesson in us

653
00:37:35,640 --> 00:37:40,279
Speaker 4: not taking medical advancements, for granted, the medical advancements to

654
00:37:40,440 --> 00:37:42,080
Speaker 4: treat the female body.

655
00:37:42,360 --> 00:37:43,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.

656
00:37:43,320 --> 00:37:47,160
Speaker 5: And we've mentioned anesthesia a hundred times already, and the

657
00:37:47,160 --> 00:37:49,799
Speaker 5: fact that these women were not under anesthesia when they

658
00:37:49,840 --> 00:37:52,040
Speaker 5: underwent these procedures.

659
00:37:51,480 --> 00:37:53,040
Speaker 1: And so what is the deal?

660
00:37:53,160 --> 00:37:58,640
Speaker 5: Is he some cruel, sadistic racist who purposely withheld anesthesia?

661
00:37:58,719 --> 00:37:59,880
Speaker 3: I mean probably.

662
00:38:01,040 --> 00:38:02,640
Speaker 1: Honestly, not a great guy.

663
00:38:03,080 --> 00:38:05,200
Speaker 5: But the answer, of course, as with all of this,

664
00:38:05,400 --> 00:38:09,040
Speaker 5: is it's not that simple. So Sims began his surgeries

665
00:38:09,080 --> 00:38:12,600
Speaker 5: on these enslaved women a year before anesthesia was successfully

666
00:38:12,600 --> 00:38:14,640
Speaker 5: demonstrated for the first time. Because you've got like, for

667
00:38:14,680 --> 00:38:20,719
Speaker 5: one hundred years doctors experimenting with different types of experimental

668
00:38:20,760 --> 00:38:25,040
Speaker 5: anesthetics but no success. Then in October of eighteen forty six,

669
00:38:25,120 --> 00:38:30,200
Speaker 5: you get dentist William T. Morton administering an effective anesthetics

670
00:38:30,200 --> 00:38:33,080
Speaker 5: sulfuric ether, to a patient having a tumor in.

671
00:38:33,120 --> 00:38:34,160
Speaker 1: His neck removed.

672
00:38:34,200 --> 00:38:37,080
Speaker 5: And although like around this time, you'd had a bunch

673
00:38:37,120 --> 00:38:39,839
Speaker 5: of other people who'd been testing new ideas and methods.

674
00:38:40,000 --> 00:38:43,600
Speaker 5: Morton really revolutionized it with his delivery system, which helped

675
00:38:43,640 --> 00:38:46,800
Speaker 5: control how much ether a patient inhaled during the procedure,

676
00:38:46,840 --> 00:38:49,040
Speaker 5: which meant, hello, your patient wouldn't ode.

677
00:38:49,520 --> 00:38:52,680
Speaker 1: And it basically gave birth to the field of anesthesiology.

678
00:38:53,640 --> 00:38:57,560
Speaker 5: But even so, the use of anesthesia, though it spread rapidly,

679
00:38:58,120 --> 00:39:01,040
Speaker 5: was still not accepted universally.

680
00:39:01,080 --> 00:39:02,320
Speaker 3: There were still all.

681
00:39:02,160 --> 00:39:05,840
Speaker 5: Sorts of weird like you shouldn't be put under because

682
00:39:05,880 --> 00:39:08,359
Speaker 5: like you might die, but also like you need to

683
00:39:08,680 --> 00:39:10,800
Speaker 5: feel the pain and like stay alert.

684
00:39:11,160 --> 00:39:16,440
Speaker 3: Well, And I don't know where this Morton dentist was located,

685
00:39:16,440 --> 00:39:18,080
Speaker 3: but I would also be curious to.

686
00:39:18,120 --> 00:39:21,799
Speaker 4: Know how long it would take news of that successful

687
00:39:21,840 --> 00:39:27,040
Speaker 4: anesthesia to reach nineteenth century Montgomery, Alabama.

688
00:39:27,160 --> 00:39:32,040
Speaker 5: Sure exactly, Yeah, I mean even proponents of using anesthesia

689
00:39:32,120 --> 00:39:34,920
Speaker 5: weren't sure that all patients needed it, and this was

690
00:39:34,960 --> 00:39:40,319
Speaker 5: definitely the case unfortunately with doctors men treating people with

691
00:39:40,440 --> 00:39:45,280
Speaker 5: vesico vaginal fistulas women. Writing in eighteen fifty nine, for instance,

692
00:39:45,360 --> 00:39:50,160
Speaker 5: Sir James Young Simpson, who had discovered chloroform, wrote, the

693
00:39:50,200 --> 00:39:53,240
Speaker 5: mere amount of pain endured by the patient is perhaps

694
00:39:53,360 --> 00:39:55,800
Speaker 5: less than in most surgical operations, as the walls of

695
00:39:55,840 --> 00:39:58,880
Speaker 5: the vesico vaginal septum are far less sensitive than you

696
00:39:58,920 --> 00:40:00,160
Speaker 5: would a prioria.

697
00:40:00,840 --> 00:40:02,000
Speaker 1: Are you kidding me?

698
00:40:02,000 --> 00:40:02,200
Speaker 2: Men?

699
00:40:02,719 --> 00:40:05,839
Speaker 1: Seriously? Sorry, I'm like ramped up here.

700
00:40:06,400 --> 00:40:11,120
Speaker 5: And Simpson's words actually echoed Sim's words that he had

701
00:40:11,160 --> 00:40:13,480
Speaker 5: given during a New York lecture in eighteen fifty seven,

702
00:40:13,760 --> 00:40:17,680
Speaker 5: during a time btw that he was exclusively treating white women,

703
00:40:17,840 --> 00:40:21,359
Speaker 5: some of higher classes at his hospital. He said that, oh, yeah,

704
00:40:21,400 --> 00:40:25,799
Speaker 5: I never use anesthesia during fistula operations quote, because they

705
00:40:25,840 --> 00:40:27,520
Speaker 5: are not painful enough.

706
00:40:27,320 --> 00:40:29,320
Speaker 1: To justify the trouble.

707
00:40:29,320 --> 00:40:34,520
Speaker 5: And risk attending their administration. Plus, he'd written about a

708
00:40:34,560 --> 00:40:36,879
Speaker 5: white woman that he'd treated back in eighteen forty nine

709
00:40:36,920 --> 00:40:39,200
Speaker 5: on whom he hadn't used anesthesia either.

710
00:40:39,520 --> 00:40:42,160
Speaker 4: And I would bet though, that that woman would have

711
00:40:42,320 --> 00:40:47,640
Speaker 4: been working class, lower class, because class definitely plays a

712
00:40:47,719 --> 00:40:50,560
Speaker 4: role if you are a white woman, and whether or

713
00:40:50,640 --> 00:40:54,160
Speaker 4: not you would receive any of this old school anesthesia.

714
00:40:54,440 --> 00:40:57,120
Speaker 4: Because there was this idea and Sims totally bought into

715
00:40:57,160 --> 00:41:01,760
Speaker 4: it that upper class white women were simply too fragile

716
00:41:01,840 --> 00:41:06,160
Speaker 4: and couldn't tolerate surgery without ether. And this also is

717
00:41:06,200 --> 00:41:10,440
Speaker 4: around the time when we start seeing doctors first advocating

718
00:41:10,600 --> 00:41:16,080
Speaker 4: for cesareans rather than vaginal deliveries because of the same

719
00:41:16,160 --> 00:41:18,640
Speaker 4: idea that these they were called.

720
00:41:18,440 --> 00:41:19,319
Speaker 3: Bookish at the time.

721
00:41:19,360 --> 00:41:22,719
Speaker 4: These bookish, wealthy women just did not have it in

722
00:41:22,760 --> 00:41:25,680
Speaker 4: them like a working class a tough working class woman

723
00:41:25,719 --> 00:41:29,120
Speaker 4: did to deliver. So it was the same kind of

724
00:41:29,160 --> 00:41:31,440
Speaker 4: thinking extended to anesthesia.

725
00:41:31,560 --> 00:41:34,120
Speaker 3: And then, of course, though, if you.

726
00:41:34,080 --> 00:41:35,920
Speaker 4: Are a woman of color, you are not going to

727
00:41:36,000 --> 00:41:40,240
Speaker 4: get anesthesia, regardless of how much money you have, probably

728
00:41:40,640 --> 00:41:45,120
Speaker 4: because of this racist notion that Sims actually wrote about

729
00:41:45,320 --> 00:41:47,359
Speaker 4: that black women have a quote.

730
00:41:47,480 --> 00:41:50,040
Speaker 3: Naturally high pain tolerance.

731
00:41:51,160 --> 00:41:55,760
Speaker 4: In eighteen ninety two, for instance, we have American neurologists

732
00:41:55,800 --> 00:42:01,960
Speaker 4: Silas Weir Mitchell writing, oh God, and this this quote. Oh,

733
00:42:01,960 --> 00:42:04,359
Speaker 4: I don't even want to quote it. The savage does

734
00:42:04,400 --> 00:42:10,680
Speaker 4: not feel pain as we do. So this includes people

735
00:42:10,719 --> 00:42:15,239
Speaker 4: of color, people also from Jewish and Irish Irish ancestry,

736
00:42:15,640 --> 00:42:19,319
Speaker 4: also Native Americans and people from Southern Europe. You were,

737
00:42:19,400 --> 00:42:22,880
Speaker 4: they were all believed to have a higher pain tolerance

738
00:42:22,960 --> 00:42:25,640
Speaker 4: slash an inferior awareness of pain.

739
00:42:25,680 --> 00:42:27,480
Speaker 3: This wasn't like some kind of superpower.

740
00:42:27,520 --> 00:42:31,880
Speaker 4: Obviously, this was a sign that they were poorly bred.

741
00:42:32,239 --> 00:42:34,640
Speaker 5: Yeah, but the horrifying paradox is that you've got all

742
00:42:34,640 --> 00:42:37,880
Speaker 5: these white doctors then, who accuse people of color and

743
00:42:37,920 --> 00:42:42,920
Speaker 5: people of lower classes of overreacting to pain, acting foolish

744
00:42:43,040 --> 00:42:45,960
Speaker 5: in the operating room. But it's like, no, I think,

745
00:42:46,040 --> 00:42:48,280
Speaker 5: I think that's a false What is that a false truth?

746
00:42:48,360 --> 00:42:49,640
Speaker 1: What false logic?

747
00:42:50,080 --> 00:42:50,200
Speaker 4: That?

748
00:42:50,320 --> 00:42:50,440
Speaker 6: Like?

749
00:42:50,680 --> 00:42:53,399
Speaker 5: Oh you think that, like, oh, you can't feel pain

750
00:42:53,440 --> 00:42:56,400
Speaker 5: as much, So look at you overreacting, you foolish person.

751
00:42:56,600 --> 00:42:59,359
Speaker 5: Shouldn't it be like, oh, no, they're human and so

752
00:42:59,400 --> 00:43:02,359
Speaker 5: they feel pain just like any other human and they're

753
00:43:02,400 --> 00:43:03,719
Speaker 5: reacting appropriately.

754
00:43:04,040 --> 00:43:09,280
Speaker 4: And it wouldn't be until the nineteen forties that doctors

755
00:43:09,320 --> 00:43:14,160
Speaker 4: started to even just question this race based idea of pain,

756
00:43:14,400 --> 00:43:20,600
Speaker 4: but that racist residue remained and remained the But going

757
00:43:20,640 --> 00:43:23,719
Speaker 4: back a few decades, a nineteen eighty one study from

758
00:43:23,719 --> 00:43:27,560
Speaker 4: Hawaii found that white surgery patients were likelier to be

759
00:43:27,600 --> 00:43:32,480
Speaker 4: given analgesics compared to Filipino, Japanese, or Chinese patients, in

760
00:43:32,520 --> 00:43:35,920
Speaker 4: part because of those old school stereotypes about how different

761
00:43:36,000 --> 00:43:40,560
Speaker 4: ethnic groups respond to pain. And if we look at

762
00:43:40,600 --> 00:43:44,239
Speaker 4: a more recent study from two thousand and two, this

763
00:43:44,400 --> 00:43:47,879
Speaker 4: landmark research found that patients of color again were less

764
00:43:48,000 --> 00:43:51,080
Speaker 4: likely to receive the same quality of care as white patients,

765
00:43:51,560 --> 00:43:55,320
Speaker 4: even when both groups had similar insurance or the same

766
00:43:55,440 --> 00:43:56,879
Speaker 4: ability to pay for care.

767
00:43:57,280 --> 00:44:00,560
Speaker 3: And oh, it's still with us, It's still with us.

768
00:44:01,320 --> 00:44:04,360
Speaker 5: Yeah, because a study in January of twenty sixteen found

769
00:44:04,400 --> 00:44:06,800
Speaker 5: that black patients are more likely to die in the

770
00:44:07,080 --> 00:44:10,200
Speaker 5: ICU than white patients, and the researchers.

771
00:44:09,640 --> 00:44:13,080
Speaker 1: Tied this to the fact that the.

772
00:44:13,000 --> 00:44:21,160
Speaker 5: Doctors literally paid less attention. They displayed less empathy to

773
00:44:21,600 --> 00:44:23,759
Speaker 5: patients of color than they did to white patients. They

774
00:44:23,800 --> 00:44:28,480
Speaker 5: were more likely to physically approach and touch and comfort

775
00:44:28,600 --> 00:44:31,960
Speaker 5: and soothe the white patients, whereas when they were dealing

776
00:44:32,040 --> 00:44:34,920
Speaker 5: with the black patients, they tended to stand at a distance,

777
00:44:35,000 --> 00:44:37,839
Speaker 5: hold a notebook in front of them, not offer as

778
00:44:37,880 --> 00:44:39,000
Speaker 5: many comforting words.

779
00:44:39,200 --> 00:44:42,399
Speaker 4: And we should note that the study authors point out

780
00:44:42,480 --> 00:44:46,120
Speaker 4: that since most of the doctors most but not all

781
00:44:46,160 --> 00:44:50,080
Speaker 4: of the doctors in that study were white, it was

782
00:44:50,360 --> 00:44:54,840
Speaker 4: hard to tell whether the quality of care would have

783
00:44:54,920 --> 00:44:57,320
Speaker 4: been better if they had been, say, doctors of color.

784
00:44:57,440 --> 00:45:00,719
Speaker 4: But they also note that previous research found that there

785
00:45:00,760 --> 00:45:04,760
Speaker 4: does tend to be better doctor patient rapport when both

786
00:45:05,000 --> 00:45:06,359
Speaker 4: share the same ethnicity.

787
00:45:06,600 --> 00:45:09,600
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I mean, you've got plenty of previous research

788
00:45:09,719 --> 00:45:13,120
Speaker 5: that's shown that up to two thirds of doctors do

789
00:45:13,239 --> 00:45:18,880
Speaker 5: display unconscious racial bias, so nothing like calling people names

790
00:45:18,960 --> 00:45:23,960
Speaker 5: or like actively trying to treat them poorly. But it's

791
00:45:24,040 --> 00:45:27,000
Speaker 5: bad enough that black patients can pick up on it.

792
00:45:27,800 --> 00:45:31,040
Speaker 4: And Caroline and reading about a discrimination that kind of

793
00:45:31,040 --> 00:45:34,080
Speaker 4: like unconscious racial bias that a lot of women of

794
00:45:34,120 --> 00:45:37,359
Speaker 4: color face when they go to the doctor. There was

795
00:45:37,800 --> 00:45:40,759
Speaker 4: an anecdote from one African American woman saying.

796
00:45:40,560 --> 00:45:43,279
Speaker 3: Whenever I have to go to the doctor, like.

797
00:45:43,239 --> 00:45:47,000
Speaker 4: If it's something unscheduled, I make sure I dress well

798
00:45:47,640 --> 00:45:49,560
Speaker 4: so that I will be taken more seriously.

799
00:45:49,800 --> 00:45:53,040
Speaker 5: Yeah, because studies have shown that there's a higher likelihood

800
00:45:53,080 --> 00:45:57,399
Speaker 5: that healthcare professionals will assume that people of color are

801
00:45:57,480 --> 00:46:00,040
Speaker 5: exhibiting drug seeking behavior and that they are just lying

802
00:46:00,080 --> 00:46:04,799
Speaker 5: about their pain to get pills. Basically I mean and

803
00:46:04,840 --> 00:46:07,960
Speaker 5: speaking of pain, there was a fascinating and horrifying at

804
00:46:07,960 --> 00:46:10,440
Speaker 5: the same time Boston Globe article from June of twenty

805
00:46:10,480 --> 00:46:13,960
Speaker 5: fourteen that looked at pain and the way that it

806
00:46:14,080 --> 00:46:17,680
Speaker 5: registers and is treated, and they found that in experiments,

807
00:46:18,440 --> 00:46:22,040
Speaker 5: both women and people of color in general have frequently

808
00:46:22,080 --> 00:46:25,880
Speaker 5: shown lower pain tolerance when asked to do things like

809
00:46:25,920 --> 00:46:29,360
Speaker 5: hold their hands in ice water during experiments, which of

810
00:46:29,440 --> 00:46:34,280
Speaker 5: course goes against the person of color aspect, goes against

811
00:46:34,320 --> 00:46:37,640
Speaker 5: all of those racist assumptions from the nineteenth century that we've.

812
00:46:37,480 --> 00:46:38,360
Speaker 1: Been talking about.

813
00:46:39,080 --> 00:46:42,600
Speaker 5: And when they're looking at gender specifically, researchers have found

814
00:46:42,600 --> 00:46:45,959
Speaker 5: that our different pain tolerances emerged during puberty, and women

815
00:46:46,080 --> 00:46:49,200
Speaker 5: end up more susceptible to things like migraines, back pain,

816
00:46:49,400 --> 00:46:52,239
Speaker 5: and fibromyalgia. And there've been all of these studies that

817
00:46:52,360 --> 00:46:57,080
Speaker 5: show that heart surgery patients, if you're a man, you're

818
00:46:57,120 --> 00:46:59,000
Speaker 5: more likely to get pain meds, and if you're.

819
00:46:58,840 --> 00:47:02,000
Speaker 1: A woman, you're more likely to get it sedatives, which

820
00:47:02,040 --> 00:47:04,320
Speaker 1: ties into the whole continuing assumption.

821
00:47:04,000 --> 00:47:09,719
Speaker 4: About hysteria and considering how chronic pain conditions tend to

822
00:47:09,760 --> 00:47:11,960
Speaker 4: affect more women than men.

823
00:47:12,040 --> 00:47:15,160
Speaker 3: There's also this issue of doctors having to.

824
00:47:15,120 --> 00:47:20,120
Speaker 4: Be convinced to give them the right kind and the

825
00:47:20,840 --> 00:47:25,120
Speaker 4: enough of their pain relievers. And if we look at

826
00:47:25,120 --> 00:47:29,919
Speaker 4: socioeconomics too, researchers found that low income Americans are likely

827
00:47:30,000 --> 00:47:32,719
Speaker 4: to suffer pain compared to their high income.

828
00:47:32,440 --> 00:47:39,520
Speaker 3: Peers, probably due to correlates with manual labor, unhealthy.

829
00:47:39,080 --> 00:47:43,720
Speaker 4: Diets, and not being able to afford going to the doctor.

830
00:47:44,280 --> 00:47:48,640
Speaker 5: Yeah, and so you're starting to see percolating to the surface,

831
00:47:49,040 --> 00:47:51,799
Speaker 5: really just echoes of everything that we talked about in

832
00:47:51,880 --> 00:47:55,560
Speaker 5: Sim's day. You're seeing people being taken less seriously, pain

833
00:47:55,640 --> 00:47:58,839
Speaker 5: being taken less seriously because it's in a woman or

834
00:47:58,880 --> 00:48:02,120
Speaker 5: someone of a lower soci economic class, or someone of color.

835
00:48:02,760 --> 00:48:08,160
Speaker 5: And speaking of race and ethnicity, among pain patients, black

836
00:48:08,200 --> 00:48:11,040
Speaker 5: people and Hispanic people are likelier to report that their

837
00:48:11,080 --> 00:48:14,840
Speaker 5: pain is severe, and black women are much likelier, for instance,

838
00:48:14,840 --> 00:48:19,320
Speaker 5: to die from breast cancer. Black women are hyper overrepresented

839
00:48:19,360 --> 00:48:23,879
Speaker 5: in breast cancer patients, but they are more likely also

840
00:48:24,040 --> 00:48:27,160
Speaker 5: to die of it, hyper overrepresented in the sense of

841
00:48:27,440 --> 00:48:33,280
Speaker 5: population proportion. So we also find that black pain patients

842
00:48:33,280 --> 00:48:36,200
Speaker 5: are less likely overall compared to white patients to receive

843
00:48:36,400 --> 00:48:38,160
Speaker 5: pain medication, and when they do.

844
00:48:38,040 --> 00:48:40,399
Speaker 1: Receive it, they receive less of it.

845
00:48:40,880 --> 00:48:41,840
Speaker 3: And studies of post.

846
00:48:41,680 --> 00:48:46,360
Speaker 4: Top care have repeatedly found that white patients receive higher

847
00:48:46,400 --> 00:48:50,120
Speaker 4: doses of opioids than patients of color.

848
00:48:51,040 --> 00:48:52,239
Speaker 1: Right, And so what's going on?

849
00:48:52,280 --> 00:48:55,760
Speaker 5: I mean the researchers talk about conscious and unconscious bias,

850
00:48:55,800 --> 00:48:59,840
Speaker 5: but also docs assumptions about patient's insurance and payments, so

851
00:49:00,400 --> 00:49:06,760
Speaker 5: you know, like racism, racist assumptions basically there's also, though weird,

852
00:49:06,880 --> 00:49:11,160
Speaker 5: internalized ideas about pain. A University of Virginia professor Sophie

853
00:49:11,160 --> 00:49:14,000
Speaker 5: Trey Walter in twenty twelve asked people to think about

854
00:49:14,040 --> 00:49:17,600
Speaker 5: pain in certain situations and then show them pictures of

855
00:49:17,640 --> 00:49:20,799
Speaker 5: a black or a white person and asked the participant

856
00:49:21,000 --> 00:49:23,279
Speaker 5: how much pain the person in the picture was in

857
00:49:23,760 --> 00:49:27,680
Speaker 5: Both white and black participants rated black patients pain as

858
00:49:27,800 --> 00:49:33,080
Speaker 5: less severe in A related study found that this pain

859
00:49:33,239 --> 00:49:39,480
Speaker 5: bias that's tied to black or white patients emerges as

860
00:49:39,520 --> 00:49:40,200
Speaker 5: early as.

861
00:49:40,080 --> 00:49:42,239
Speaker 3: Seven and tree.

862
00:49:42,239 --> 00:49:48,360
Speaker 4: Walter attributes this kind of benevolent racism to the belief

863
00:49:48,560 --> 00:49:54,160
Speaker 4: that black people have harder lives and that hardship leads

864
00:49:54,200 --> 00:49:57,640
Speaker 4: to toughness, and this also leads us to the trope

865
00:49:57,719 --> 00:50:00,799
Speaker 4: of you know, the strong black woman, which can be

866
00:50:01,160 --> 00:50:03,919
Speaker 4: very harmful as well because of all of these very

867
00:50:03,920 --> 00:50:08,839
Speaker 4: practical issues of literally like you know, doctors assuming like, well,

868
00:50:08,880 --> 00:50:12,440
Speaker 4: you don't need as much uh pain treatment, but also

869
00:50:12,719 --> 00:50:19,400
Speaker 4: just those those racist ideologies too that give us, you know,

870
00:50:19,480 --> 00:50:23,920
Speaker 4: kind of quote unquote permission to maybe not consider their

871
00:50:23,960 --> 00:50:25,600
Speaker 4: needs as much because it's like, oh, well, you know,

872
00:50:26,120 --> 00:50:27,879
Speaker 4: they're so strong or so to have they been through

873
00:50:27,920 --> 00:50:31,719
Speaker 4: so much, so even I guess physical pain.

874
00:50:32,040 --> 00:50:35,120
Speaker 3: Can also be withstood to a stronger degree.

875
00:50:35,400 --> 00:50:39,120
Speaker 5: Again, echoes of the way that people were thinking about

876
00:50:39,280 --> 00:50:42,719
Speaker 5: enslaved people in this country, like oh, they're tough, they're fine.

877
00:50:42,480 --> 00:50:45,200
Speaker 1: But then again, like those people were literally viewed with property.

878
00:50:45,719 --> 00:50:48,520
Speaker 3: Well, and speaking of which I mean this.

879
00:50:49,880 --> 00:50:55,880
Speaker 4: Chapter of gynecology, early gynecological history is part of a

880
00:50:56,280 --> 00:51:02,439
Speaker 4: broader legacy of people of color really being used as

881
00:51:02,719 --> 00:51:06,279
Speaker 4: guinea pigs for a lot of medical experimentation that has

882
00:51:06,320 --> 00:51:10,080
Speaker 4: gone on in the United States. Todd Sabat, for instance,

883
00:51:10,360 --> 00:51:14,759
Speaker 4: who's a medical historian at East Carolina University, told BuzzFeed

884
00:51:14,840 --> 00:51:18,200
Speaker 4: News quote, medicine is an integral part of the story

885
00:51:18,600 --> 00:51:22,240
Speaker 4: of slavery. And this is something that had Henriette Washington

886
00:51:22,360 --> 00:51:26,640
Speaker 4: writes about in her book Medical Apartheid, that we referenced

887
00:51:26,680 --> 00:51:30,360
Speaker 4: in our podcast a while back now on Henrietta Lax,

888
00:51:30,840 --> 00:51:34,760
Speaker 4: who died from cervical cancer but without her family's consent,

889
00:51:36,760 --> 00:51:41,360
Speaker 4: cells were taken from her, I guess, from her cervix

890
00:51:41,840 --> 00:51:47,160
Speaker 4: and they infinitely reproduce these HeLa cells as they're known today.

891
00:51:47,280 --> 00:51:49,480
Speaker 4: And thanks to these HeLa cells, there have been all

892
00:51:49,520 --> 00:51:53,080
Speaker 4: sorts of medical breakthroughs that have resulted.

893
00:51:53,880 --> 00:51:57,160
Speaker 3: But the family you know of Henriette.

894
00:51:56,760 --> 00:52:02,000
Speaker 4: Lax rightfully feels so wronged by this because again it's

895
00:52:02,080 --> 00:52:05,120
Speaker 4: like bodies just being used as property.

896
00:52:04,840 --> 00:52:09,680
Speaker 5: Right, Yeah, as shankra Vedantam said, just props for someone

897
00:52:09,719 --> 00:52:11,000
Speaker 5: else's advancement.

898
00:52:11,120 --> 00:52:12,240
Speaker 1: And again it's.

899
00:52:12,120 --> 00:52:16,160
Speaker 5: The same thing with Sims of like you know, researchers

900
00:52:16,160 --> 00:52:19,000
Speaker 5: and physicians have been able to make incredible discoveries based

901
00:52:19,080 --> 00:52:25,000
Speaker 5: on stolen cells from this woman who was not informed

902
00:52:25,239 --> 00:52:28,320
Speaker 5: and who later died and her family who was never informed.

903
00:52:28,560 --> 00:52:31,160
Speaker 4: And it's also I mean, these issues also are not

904
00:52:31,320 --> 00:52:35,319
Speaker 4: exclusive to the bodies of women of color. I mean,

905
00:52:35,360 --> 00:52:39,680
Speaker 4: you have the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis study that was initiated

906
00:52:39,760 --> 00:52:44,200
Speaker 4: in nineteen thirty two, which deliberately infected four hundred black

907
00:52:44,239 --> 00:52:49,480
Speaker 4: men with syphilis. If we go back to eighteen fifty five,

908
00:52:49,560 --> 00:52:52,640
Speaker 4: around the same time that Jay Mary and Sims is

909
00:52:53,280 --> 00:52:57,680
Speaker 4: building his women's hospital, you have John fed Brown, who

910
00:52:57,840 --> 00:53:02,160
Speaker 4: was an escape slave. Recall that the doctor to whom

911
00:53:02,200 --> 00:53:05,880
Speaker 4: he was indentured would produce painful blisters on his body

912
00:53:06,000 --> 00:53:08,360
Speaker 4: in order to observe quote how deep.

913
00:53:08,200 --> 00:53:09,560
Speaker 3: My black skin went.

914
00:53:11,160 --> 00:53:14,839
Speaker 4: And then if we want some more horrifying examples, we

915
00:53:14,880 --> 00:53:19,120
Speaker 4: also have in the fifties, black Fluoridians being deliberately exposed

916
00:53:19,400 --> 00:53:23,279
Speaker 4: to swarms of mosquitoes carrying yellow fever and other diseases,

917
00:53:23,520 --> 00:53:28,799
Speaker 4: and experiments conducted by the Army and the CIA. And

918
00:53:29,000 --> 00:53:31,560
Speaker 4: finally we have in the sixties and seventies. And I

919
00:53:31,560 --> 00:53:34,320
Speaker 4: say finally, just as this is the end of my list,

920
00:53:34,360 --> 00:53:38,759
Speaker 4: this is not the end of these instances. But in

921
00:53:38,760 --> 00:53:42,239
Speaker 4: the sixties and seventies you have African American boys being

922
00:53:42,280 --> 00:53:47,520
Speaker 4: subjected to sometimes paralyzing neurosurgery by researcher at the University

923
00:53:47,560 --> 00:53:51,400
Speaker 4: of Mississippi who believed that brain pathology could be the

924
00:53:51,480 --> 00:53:54,840
Speaker 4: root of children's hyperactive behavior.

925
00:53:54,960 --> 00:53:58,359
Speaker 3: So the subjects he chose black boys.

926
00:53:58,920 --> 00:54:03,319
Speaker 5: Right, And so this country, I mean, we have an

927
00:54:03,440 --> 00:54:09,520
Speaker 5: undeniable history of racist medical developments.

928
00:54:09,680 --> 00:54:11,440
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, And the thing is we can't go

929
00:54:11,560 --> 00:54:14,360
Speaker 4: back in time and change it. And a solution obviously

930
00:54:14,440 --> 00:54:18,080
Speaker 4: is not okay, all of those procedures out the door.

931
00:54:18,600 --> 00:54:21,520
Speaker 4: You know, if we were to retire every single medical

932
00:54:21,560 --> 00:54:26,480
Speaker 4: procedure that traces back to either a recent or distant

933
00:54:26,560 --> 00:54:32,080
Speaker 4: past racist experimentation or ideology, I.

934
00:54:32,000 --> 00:54:35,040
Speaker 3: Mean, hospitals would just collapse in on themselves. Probably.

935
00:54:36,480 --> 00:54:38,680
Speaker 4: So what do we do in that case, I mean,

936
00:54:38,719 --> 00:54:42,040
Speaker 4: what do we do in the cases of Lucy, Betsy

937
00:54:42,200 --> 00:54:46,160
Speaker 4: an Arca and the other women who are really the

938
00:54:46,200 --> 00:54:47,720
Speaker 4: mothers of gynecology.

939
00:54:48,480 --> 00:54:52,320
Speaker 5: Well, Victoria Gamble, who we cited earlier, had the suggestion

940
00:54:52,760 --> 00:54:57,880
Speaker 5: of memorializing them through their own statues. If Sims has three,

941
00:54:58,480 --> 00:55:02,000
Speaker 5: why don't these three women have any? And so she

942
00:55:02,160 --> 00:55:05,440
Speaker 5: says that, you know, the statues would not be based

943
00:55:05,520 --> 00:55:08,400
Speaker 5: on the experiments that they were subjected to, because we

944
00:55:08,400 --> 00:55:11,360
Speaker 5: shouldn't think of them just as victims. She says, it

945
00:55:11,440 --> 00:55:13,759
Speaker 5: might be with the three of them together, or it

946
00:55:13,840 --> 00:55:16,520
Speaker 5: might be withholding their children, because they were mothers and

947
00:55:16,560 --> 00:55:18,399
Speaker 5: they were women, so that would be part of it.

948
00:55:19,480 --> 00:55:22,239
Speaker 5: So it would not be she says, they're prostrate on

949
00:55:22,280 --> 00:55:26,319
Speaker 5: the altar of science. And then she says, I think

950
00:55:26,360 --> 00:55:29,839
Speaker 5: what the inscription would say is Betsy, A. Narka and

951
00:55:29,960 --> 00:55:32,600
Speaker 5: Lucy the mothers of modern gynecology.

952
00:55:33,000 --> 00:55:35,120
Speaker 3: And I think that that statue should happen. How do

953
00:55:35,160 --> 00:55:38,400
Speaker 3: we build a statue? Carolin? Do you like kickstart that? I?

954
00:55:38,840 --> 00:55:41,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's like the only thing that I can think.

955
00:55:41,400 --> 00:55:41,960
Speaker 3: Of is that.

956
00:55:42,840 --> 00:55:46,400
Speaker 4: I'm sure some listener who works for the government knows

957
00:55:46,560 --> 00:55:49,960
Speaker 4: how you get a statue directed because I mean, can

958
00:55:50,000 --> 00:55:51,200
Speaker 4: we start like a campaign.

959
00:55:51,480 --> 00:55:52,560
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure we could.

960
00:55:52,680 --> 00:55:55,359
Speaker 5: And you know, I think there's an interesting point about

961
00:55:55,360 --> 00:55:57,680
Speaker 5: sims of statues. A lot of people have argued for

962
00:55:57,719 --> 00:56:00,400
Speaker 5: them to come down. But there was one anecdote, and

963
00:56:00,480 --> 00:56:02,600
Speaker 5: I'm so sorry I can't remember who it was, if

964
00:56:02,640 --> 00:56:06,440
Speaker 5: it was Gamble or if it was another researcher, but

965
00:56:06,719 --> 00:56:09,600
Speaker 5: she said that she had initially supported taking all of

966
00:56:09,600 --> 00:56:14,120
Speaker 5: the Sims statues down until she took a tour of

967
00:56:14,880 --> 00:56:19,360
Speaker 5: basically the slave trade in Liverpool in the UK, and

968
00:56:19,520 --> 00:56:26,000
Speaker 5: there was this statue of Neptune with two black boys

969
00:56:26,040 --> 00:56:29,040
Speaker 5: basically in chains at the base of the statue, and

970
00:56:29,080 --> 00:56:32,040
Speaker 5: people had been arguing for that to come down, and

971
00:56:32,320 --> 00:56:35,759
Speaker 5: the black man who was leading the tour said, well,

972
00:56:35,800 --> 00:56:39,600
Speaker 5: I don't think it should because if this statue comes down,

973
00:56:39,960 --> 00:56:44,040
Speaker 5: people will forget, people will not talk about it anymore

974
00:56:44,080 --> 00:56:46,600
Speaker 5: because they will not see this visible reminder of the

975
00:56:46,640 --> 00:56:50,879
Speaker 5: horrors that happened right here in this city. And so

976
00:56:51,080 --> 00:56:54,800
Speaker 5: I think that argument could also be applied to Sims.

977
00:56:55,400 --> 00:56:57,800
Speaker 5: It would be nice to maybe see on the plaques

978
00:56:57,840 --> 00:57:03,719
Speaker 5: by his statues, maybe an asterisk explaining that, while yes,

979
00:57:03,800 --> 00:57:05,160
Speaker 5: he did develop some.

980
00:57:05,239 --> 00:57:07,759
Speaker 1: Incredible life changing procedures.

981
00:57:07,840 --> 00:57:12,520
Speaker 5: He did it at the expense of women who basically

982
00:57:12,560 --> 00:57:14,360
Speaker 5: had no choice.

983
00:57:14,560 --> 00:57:17,080
Speaker 4: So listeners, we now want to know what you think

984
00:57:17,120 --> 00:57:19,440
Speaker 4: about all of this. A. Do you know how we

985
00:57:19,480 --> 00:57:24,000
Speaker 4: can get a statue built? B have you Are you

986
00:57:24,040 --> 00:57:26,520
Speaker 4: a patient of color who has ever experienced this kind

987
00:57:26,600 --> 00:57:30,800
Speaker 4: of discrimination in the doctor's office. We want to hear

988
00:57:30,840 --> 00:57:35,560
Speaker 4: your stories because obviously this is yes history that we've

989
00:57:35,560 --> 00:57:36,840
Speaker 4: been talking about, but it is.

990
00:57:36,920 --> 00:57:38,680
Speaker 3: History that lives on today.

991
00:57:39,400 --> 00:57:42,640
Speaker 4: So mom Stuff at housetuffworks dot com is our email address.

992
00:57:42,680 --> 00:57:45,200
Speaker 4: You can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or

993
00:57:45,280 --> 00:57:47,120
Speaker 4: messages on Facebook.

994
00:57:46,800 --> 00:57:48,800
Speaker 3: And we've got a couple of messages to share with

995
00:57:48,880 --> 00:57:50,040
Speaker 3: you right now.

996
00:57:59,320 --> 00:58:02,640
Speaker 5: I've got a letter here from another Christian in response

997
00:58:02,720 --> 00:58:07,280
Speaker 5: to our colorism episode. She says, you mentioned a study

998
00:58:07,320 --> 00:58:09,600
Speaker 5: that stated how the dark skinned black women who were

999
00:58:09,640 --> 00:58:11,880
Speaker 5: surveyed all said that they had at some point wanted

1000
00:58:11,920 --> 00:58:14,520
Speaker 5: to be lighter skinned, but the light skinned black women

1001
00:58:14,600 --> 00:58:17,800
Speaker 5: surveyed had never wanted to be darker. This reminded me

1002
00:58:17,840 --> 00:58:20,240
Speaker 5: of something I used to do in my childhood, a

1003
00:58:20,360 --> 00:58:23,640
Speaker 5: very light skinned Mexican American girl. I would purposely try

1004
00:58:23,680 --> 00:58:25,440
Speaker 5: to stay out in the sun as long as I could,

1005
00:58:25,520 --> 00:58:28,720
Speaker 5: wanting to become dark like my sisters, most of my

1006
00:58:28,840 --> 00:58:31,720
Speaker 5: family members, and the group of Mexican kids at my school.

1007
00:58:32,040 --> 00:58:34,360
Speaker 5: I would even take sun tanloation and rub it all

1008
00:58:34,360 --> 00:58:36,440
Speaker 5: over myself and then go lie out in the sun.

1009
00:58:36,880 --> 00:58:38,720
Speaker 5: I remember that, even at a young age, I was

1010
00:58:38,840 --> 00:58:43,320
Speaker 5: conscious that darker skinned Mexicans were perceived as more authentically Mexican,

1011
00:58:43,680 --> 00:58:45,800
Speaker 5: and that my light skin, combounded with the fact that

1012
00:58:45,880 --> 00:58:48,480
Speaker 5: I wasn't taught Spanish, made it more difficult for me

1013
00:58:48,560 --> 00:58:51,439
Speaker 5: to gain acceptance in Mexican social groups and even within

1014
00:58:51,480 --> 00:58:54,480
Speaker 5: my own family, in which only my mother, grandmother, and

1015
00:58:54,480 --> 00:58:57,200
Speaker 5: I are light. Don't get me wrong, I definitely know

1016
00:58:57,280 --> 00:58:59,880
Speaker 5: my privilege as a light skinned Mexican and have seen

1017
00:59:00,080 --> 00:59:03,520
Speaker 5: firsthand how, for example, my father's dark skin has made

1018
00:59:03,600 --> 00:59:08,000
Speaker 5: him a target for random searches, being followed around department stores,

1019
00:59:08,040 --> 00:59:10,520
Speaker 5: being asked for receipts upon leaving a store, and even

1020
00:59:10,560 --> 00:59:13,920
Speaker 5: having racial slurs hurled in him from moving cars. I

1021
00:59:14,000 --> 00:59:16,480
Speaker 5: know without a doubt that I moved through life differently

1022
00:59:16,480 --> 00:59:18,840
Speaker 5: than he does, and that our skin colors impact our

1023
00:59:18,960 --> 00:59:21,720
Speaker 5: daily lives. In fact, my mom once told me that

1024
00:59:21,800 --> 00:59:24,480
Speaker 5: instead of focusing on radio journalism, I should go into

1025
00:59:24,520 --> 00:59:26,680
Speaker 5: TV news as it would be easy for me to

1026
00:59:26,680 --> 00:59:28,680
Speaker 5: get a job since as a Latina I would be

1027
00:59:28,760 --> 00:59:31,959
Speaker 5: a diversity higher but that I looked quote white enough

1028
00:59:32,000 --> 00:59:34,520
Speaker 5: to not be perceived as threatening to the status quo

1029
00:59:34,920 --> 00:59:38,000
Speaker 5: a happy medium for everyone. Even now at twenty seven,

1030
00:59:38,040 --> 00:59:41,320
Speaker 5: I struggle with feeling authentically connected to my Mexican heritage

1031
00:59:41,360 --> 00:59:43,560
Speaker 5: due to my light skin, but I try to remember

1032
00:59:43,560 --> 00:59:46,040
Speaker 5: that authentic Mexicans come in all shades, from white to

1033
00:59:46,120 --> 00:59:49,120
Speaker 5: black and everything in between. Thanks for these thought and

1034
00:59:49,280 --> 00:59:51,840
Speaker 5: memory of provoking podcasts.

1035
00:59:51,320 --> 00:59:52,240
Speaker 1: And thank you Kristin.

1036
00:59:52,760 --> 00:59:55,760
Speaker 4: So I've got a letter hear from Chinwei also about

1037
00:59:55,800 --> 00:59:59,160
Speaker 4: our colorism episode, and Hinwi writes, I was going to

1038
00:59:59,200 --> 01:00:02,240
Speaker 4: skip this particul episode, but I'm glad I listened to

1039
01:00:02,320 --> 01:00:04,880
Speaker 4: the end. As a dark skinned woman, I'm kind of

1040
01:00:04,960 --> 01:00:08,320
Speaker 4: tired of everyone telling me how bad my life should be,

1041
01:00:08,720 --> 01:00:10,880
Speaker 4: how hard I must have it, and how I most

1042
01:00:10,880 --> 01:00:12,320
Speaker 4: certainly hate myself.

1043
01:00:12,680 --> 01:00:14,240
Speaker 3: I've never experienced those things.

1044
01:00:14,640 --> 01:00:17,160
Speaker 4: Not sure what luck prevented me from not having that

1045
01:00:17,200 --> 01:00:20,640
Speaker 4: particular experience, but I'm very grateful for it. I struggle

1046
01:00:20,640 --> 01:00:23,760
Speaker 4: between trying not to have my experience erased and trying

1047
01:00:23,800 --> 01:00:26,800
Speaker 4: to support any relief exposure of colorism can bring to

1048
01:00:26,840 --> 01:00:29,200
Speaker 4: those impacted by it. I know it must have been

1049
01:00:29,240 --> 01:00:31,720
Speaker 4: difficult for two white women to speak about this, so

1050
01:00:31,760 --> 01:00:34,280
Speaker 4: I applaud your efforts. I do think there's so much

1051
01:00:34,360 --> 01:00:35,520
Speaker 4: nuance missed when.

1052
01:00:35,360 --> 01:00:37,960
Speaker 3: You don't have personal experience to draw on, and I.

1053
01:00:37,960 --> 01:00:40,640
Speaker 4: Think this episode could have been made slightly better from

1054
01:00:40,640 --> 01:00:41,760
Speaker 4: first hand accounts.

1055
01:00:41,920 --> 01:00:44,439
Speaker 3: And for the record, Chinway totally agree with you there.

1056
01:00:45,040 --> 01:00:47,840
Speaker 4: As a black, non African American woman, I want to

1057
01:00:47,840 --> 01:00:52,480
Speaker 4: give particular credit to African American women for continuing.

1058
01:00:51,800 --> 01:00:54,120
Speaker 3: To push this conversation worldwide.

1059
01:00:54,640 --> 01:00:57,000
Speaker 4: I think there's been a lot of progress on this issue,

1060
01:00:57,160 --> 01:00:59,880
Speaker 4: a lot of regnition of our biases and active in

1061
01:01:00,000 --> 01:01:01,920
Speaker 4: individual steps to combat it as well.

1062
01:01:02,160 --> 01:01:03,280
Speaker 3: And there's still more to do.

1063
01:01:03,360 --> 01:01:06,680
Speaker 4: But I truly believe my darker tone nieces and nephews

1064
01:01:06,720 --> 01:01:09,400
Speaker 4: will grow up in a different society than the.

1065
01:01:09,240 --> 01:01:11,080
Speaker 3: One my peers experienced.

1066
01:01:11,480 --> 01:01:15,920
Speaker 4: Thanks for the attempt, Shinwe well, thank you for sharing

1067
01:01:15,960 --> 01:01:19,400
Speaker 4: your personal experiences with us, because I mean, I think,

1068
01:01:19,440 --> 01:01:23,200
Speaker 4: as we said in that podcast, we wanted to hear

1069
01:01:23,520 --> 01:01:27,600
Speaker 4: first hand accounts because you're absolutely right to white skinned

1070
01:01:27,600 --> 01:01:34,160
Speaker 4: women cannot firsthand relate to this, So keep the conversation going.

1071
01:01:34,240 --> 01:01:34,840
Speaker 3: Friends, Mom.

1072
01:01:34,880 --> 01:01:37,240
Speaker 4: Stuff at house stuffworks dot com is where you can

1073
01:01:37,280 --> 01:01:39,960
Speaker 4: send your letters and for links to all of our

1074
01:01:39,960 --> 01:01:42,320
Speaker 4: social media as well as all of our blogs, videos

1075
01:01:42,320 --> 01:01:45,640
Speaker 4: and podcasts with our sources. If you want to learn

1076
01:01:45,680 --> 01:01:49,000
Speaker 4: more about the mothers of gynecology, head on over to

1077
01:01:49,040 --> 01:01:55,800
Speaker 4: stuff Mom Never Told You dot com.

1078
01:01:52,920 --> 01:01:58,320
Speaker 3: Thanks for more on this and thousands of other topics,

1079
01:01:58,480 --> 01:01:59,640
Speaker 3: visit housetuffworks dot

1080
01:01:59,680 --> 01:02:07,240
Speaker 4: Com called exampled example m