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SAY ANARCHA by J.C. Hallman

SAY ANARCHA

A Young Woman, a Devious Surgeon, and the Harrowing Birth of Modern Women's Health

by J.C. Hallman

Pub Date: June 6th, 2023
ISBN: 9781250868466
Publisher: Henry Holt

An excavation of the lives and legacies of Dr. J. Marion Sims, “the so-called Father of Gynecology,” and Anarcha, the enslaved woman upon whom he operated without anesthesia.

“Every woman living today owes a debt to Anarcha,” writes Hallman, author of In Utopia and The Chess Artist, in the introduction to this dual biography. Beginning in 1845, Sims conducted experimental vaginal surgeries to treat fistulae, without anesthesia, on enslaved women in his backyard “Negro Hospital” near Montgomery, Alabama. “If Sims could contrive a cure for fistula on a slave,” the author writes, “gains that could be realized were immeasurable….The women would be willing because they were desperate, and their masters would leap at the chance of salvaging their investment.” The women, meanwhile, “said that a painful experiment was like being whipped while giving birth,” and the surgeries often resulted in death. Supposedly, Anarcha’s fistula was the first one Sims “cured.” Later, another doctor recognized that “the girl who was the first cure of an incurable condition had not been cured at all.” Still, Sims persevered, fueled largely by what the author identifies as blind ambition. “Sims knew his ambition was too large for Alabama,” writes Hallman, who divides the book into two parts. Instead of titles, numbered chapters bear descriptions—e.g., “Foreshortening of the vagina,” “Animal laboratory,” “An enslaved man, stabbed,” “Money problems.” Although Sims was long esteemed for pioneering modern gynecology, by 2017, the author writes, his legacy “had become intertwined with broader reevaluations of white supremacy in American history” and “with a long overdue indictment of the causes of racial health disparities.” Hallman has drawn from almost 5,000 sources, and he includes a four-page list of “all the formerly enslaved persons whose narratives contributed to the re-creation of Anarcha’s story.” Further information on his research can be found at AnarchaArchive.com.

A staggeringly researched book that serves as an indictment of Sims’ hubris and an homage to Anarcha.