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Social History of Medicine Advance Access published online on July 7, 2007
Social History of Medicine, doi:10.1093/shm/hkm036
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© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Social History of Medicine. All rights reserved

‘I can do the child no good’: Dr Sims and the Enslaved Infants of Montgomery, Alabama

Stephen C. Kenny*

* School of History, University of Liverpool, 9 Abercromby Square, Liverpool L69 7WZ, UK. E-mail: S.C.Kenny{at}liverpool.ac.uk


  Abstract

Summary This article examines the influence of slavery and race on medical education, practice and research in the American South. Drawing on the published autobiography, case-histories, and correspondence of American slave surgeon and ‘pioneer’ gynaecologist, James Marion Sims, the contribution highlights a lesser known episode from his early career, namely his surgical treatment of enslaved infants suffering from trismus nascentium (neonatal tetanus). Sims became a highly prestigious figure in his later medical career, but the foundations of his success relied on the use of slave bodies and enslaved patients. These were typically distinctive features of the life of an ambitious medical professional in the slave South, where the profession profited from the institution of slavery, and human experimentation and medical research were advanced specifically through the exploitation of the region's enslaved population.

Keywords: James Marion Sims; slavery; American South; enslaved body; anatomy; human experimentation


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