J. Marion Sims: Gynecologic Surgeon, from “The History of Medicine”

This painting depicts the work of Dr. James Marion Sims and his colleagues. In the nineteenth century, Sims, a white doctor from Alabama, performed dozens of experimental gynecological surgeries on enslaved women without anesthesia. Sims also compelled enslaved women to assist him in his medical experimentation as well as serve as subjects of the experiments. The painting is the only known representation of Lucy, Anarcha, and Betsey, three enslaved women whom Sims operated on. The imagined scene suggested Sims’s prestige as the “father of gynecology” and a future president of the American Medical Association; but it ignores the terror experienced by Lucy, the enslaved woman seated in the center. The image was painted in the 1950s by American artist Robert Thom, as part of a series dedicated to “Great Moments in Medicine.”

Source: https://exchange.umma.umich.edu/resources/41241/view