logo

Were enslaved Black people subjected to operations without anesthesia and other medical experiments?

Thursday, June 11, 2020
By William Boger
YES

Pre-emancipation doctors conducted medical experiments on enslaved Black people without any thought of obtaining their subjects' consent.

In his autobiography, James Sims, considered the father of modern gynecology, describes the agony women suffered as he cut their genitals repeatedly without anesthesia, attempting to "perfect" his surgical techniques. He boasted about the advantages of working on people that were his property saying, "There was never a time that I could not, at any day, have had a subject for operation.” Sims considered this the most "memorable time" of his life.

Several other cases are well documented. John Brown, a slave, was flayed, blistered and tortured by Dr. Thomas Hamilton in an attempt to prove racial physiological differences.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR
Between 2020 and 2022, under close editorial supervision, Gigafact contracted a group of freelance writers and editors to test the concepts for fact briefs and provide inputs to our software development process. We call this effort Gigafact Foundry. Over the course of these two years, Gigafact Foundry writers published over 1500 fact briefs in response to claims they found online. Their important work forms the basis of Gigafact formats and editorial guidelines, and is available to the public on Gigafact.org. Readers should be aware that while there is still a lot of relevant information to be found, not all fact briefs produced by Gigafact Foundry reflect Gigafact's current methods and standards for fact briefs. If you come across any that you feel are out of date and need to be looked at with fresh eyes, don't hesitate to contact us at support@gigafact.org.
FACT BRIEF BY
facebook
twitter
email
email