11-06-2025, 08:54 PM
Her name was Anarcha Westcott. You will not find her in most history books, yet her pain became the foundation of modern women’s medicine.
Anarcha was only 17 years old and enslaved on a plantation in Alabama when she gave birth to a stillborn child. The difficult labor left her with a condition known as a vesicovaginal fistula. It caused constant pain, bleeding, and leaking of urine. She needed compassion and medical care. Instead, she became an experiment.
Dr. J. Marion Sims, a white physician, took notice. He was ambitious and wanted to find a surgical cure for fistulas, but at a horrifying cost. Between 1845 and 1849, Sims performed more than 30 experimental surgeries on Anarcha. He used no anesthesia and claimed that Black women felt less pain. Each time he cut, stitched, and reopened her wounds. She screamed. He kept going.
Anarcha was not the only one. Two other enslaved women, Lucy and Betsey, were also experimented on. Lucy nearly died from infection after one of Sims’s early procedures. Betsey endured repeated examinations and surgeries as Sims refined his technique.
When his methods finally succeeded, thanks to Anarcha’s endurance, Sims presented the operation as his own medical triumph. He published his results, moved to New York, and opened the first hospital for women’s health. He became known as the father of modern gynecology.
But here is the truth.
He built his fame on the bodies of women who had no choice. Women who could not say no. Women whose pain was ignored because of the color of their skin.
Later in life, Sims did use anesthesia, but only when operating on white women. His procedures became the foundation for surgical tools like the speculum, which he designed during his experiments on Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsey.
For more than a century, Sims was celebrated. Hospitals bore his name. Statues were built in his honor, including one in New York’s Central Park. It was not until 2018 that the city removed that statue after protests and public outcry.
Today, historians and advocates are working to restore the names of the women who made those medical advances possible.
Anarcha Westcott,
Lucy, and
Betsey.
Their resilience changed the world. Their suffering gave rise to knowledge that still saves lives. But their stories were buried beneath someone else’s glory.
They were not assistants. They were not volunteers. They were victims.
Modern medicine owes them recognition, not silence.
Say their names: Anarcha. Lucy. Betsey.
They deserve to be remembered not as subjects but as the true mothers of gynecology.
Anarcha was only 17 years old and enslaved on a plantation in Alabama when she gave birth to a stillborn child. The difficult labor left her with a condition known as a vesicovaginal fistula. It caused constant pain, bleeding, and leaking of urine. She needed compassion and medical care. Instead, she became an experiment.
Dr. J. Marion Sims, a white physician, took notice. He was ambitious and wanted to find a surgical cure for fistulas, but at a horrifying cost. Between 1845 and 1849, Sims performed more than 30 experimental surgeries on Anarcha. He used no anesthesia and claimed that Black women felt less pain. Each time he cut, stitched, and reopened her wounds. She screamed. He kept going.
Anarcha was not the only one. Two other enslaved women, Lucy and Betsey, were also experimented on. Lucy nearly died from infection after one of Sims’s early procedures. Betsey endured repeated examinations and surgeries as Sims refined his technique.
When his methods finally succeeded, thanks to Anarcha’s endurance, Sims presented the operation as his own medical triumph. He published his results, moved to New York, and opened the first hospital for women’s health. He became known as the father of modern gynecology.
But here is the truth.
He built his fame on the bodies of women who had no choice. Women who could not say no. Women whose pain was ignored because of the color of their skin.
Later in life, Sims did use anesthesia, but only when operating on white women. His procedures became the foundation for surgical tools like the speculum, which he designed during his experiments on Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsey.
For more than a century, Sims was celebrated. Hospitals bore his name. Statues were built in his honor, including one in New York’s Central Park. It was not until 2018 that the city removed that statue after protests and public outcry.
Today, historians and advocates are working to restore the names of the women who made those medical advances possible.
Anarcha Westcott,
Lucy, and
Betsey.
Their resilience changed the world. Their suffering gave rise to knowledge that still saves lives. But their stories were buried beneath someone else’s glory.
They were not assistants. They were not volunteers. They were victims.
Modern medicine owes them recognition, not silence.
Say their names: Anarcha. Lucy. Betsey.
They deserve to be remembered not as subjects but as the true mothers of gynecology.