2007/07/07 by Stephen Kenny · 2 citations
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · Psychology · Medicine · #Medical History and Innovations #Race, History, and American Society #Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices #Biography #Race (biology) #Institution #Trismus #Apprenticeship #History #Medicine #Sociology #Gender studies #Art history #Surgery #Social science #Archaeology
paper · doi:10.1093/shm/hkm036
openalex publication_date 2007/07/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
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.