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The question might best be answered by Anarcha (17), Lucy (age 18), and Betsey. The young women from plantations in or around Alabama whose bodies were sacrificed for progress” (Rethinking the Legacy of Marion Sims). These are the “found” names of the victims who were operated on without consent or methods or soothing the pain or care. Anarcha developed a vesicovaginal fistula. It’s an internal tear. It’s invasive. An opening between one’s bladder and the wall of the vagina. It would seem surgery is the only treatment. “Injury, surgery, obstructed labor poor socioeconomic status, early marriage, malnourishment, low literacy rate, and poor health-care system[s]” are preventable causes of a vesicovaginal fistula (Ting et al 1).
For young women like Lucy, Anarcha, and Betsey the possibility of prevention was not option as they were not seen a human who experienced pain but as property. Because of their age and position, part of their performed labor would have to breed and birth. The women being injured through birth caused an economic detriment. They were bargained for their “livelihoods”- to keep working. The women were purchased or rented to endure continuous brutal experimentation- cutting, tearing, clamping, scraping, and stitching without anesthesia. (Many make the argument that anesthesia did not exist; therefore, it could not be that “inhumane.” This is incorrect.
According to physician and medical historian at George Washington University, Vanessa Northington Gamble, “He did treat white women. But he treated white women with anesthesia. Sims left - in the 1850s, he left Alabama and moved to New York City for health reasons. And he started a women's hospital in 1855 there. He gained a reputation as an excellent surgeon. And so that he did treat white women. But the technique had been perfected on the bodies of [B]lack women[2]). Black women’s pain is responsible for innovation in what we now call gynecology. We credit a man called Marion for documenting his experimentations on Black woman. He grew famous, warranting monuments and articles, some that even defend his abuse of Black women because of his great medical advancements.
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