J. Marion Sims

James Marion Sims was an American physician in the field of surgery. His most famous work was the development of a surgical technique for the repair of vesicovaginal fistula, a severe complication of obstructed childbirth. He developed this technique via non-consensual and unanesthetized surgeries on enslaved black women Anarcha Westcott, Lucy and Betsey and impoverished Irish women. He is also remembered for inventing the Sims speculum, the Sims sigmoid catheter, and Sims' position. Against significant opposition, he established, in New York, the first hospital in the United States specifically for women. He was forced out of the hospital he founded because he insisted on treating cancer patients; he played a small role in the creation of the nation's first cancer hospital, which opened after his death.