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SMNTY Classics: The Mothers of Gynecology · Stuff Mom Never Told You

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  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha.
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  Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff I Never Told You, a production of
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  Speaker 2: iHeart Radio, and today we're bringing back a classic inspired
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  Speaker 2: by the recent Monday mini that you did, Samantha, about gynecology.
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  Speaker 2: Because past host Kristen and Caroline did a whole episode
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  Speaker 2: about gynecology. I will tell you this episode is a
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  Speaker 2: little rough the past of it's not pretty, So just
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  Speaker 2: a warning before you endeavor.
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  Speaker 3: Warning.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, just a little content warning. But it is really
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  Speaker 2: interesting because it we were discussing men in the field
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  Speaker 2: of gynecology and in this episode they touched on that
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  Speaker 2: and then they talk about a lot of the hidden
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  Speaker 2: women who were doing gynecology and not getting the credit
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  Speaker 2: that men were getting, which is so often the case.
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  Speaker 2: So please enjoy this classic episode.
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  Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff, Mom Never Told You from how Stuff
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  Speaker 3: Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
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  Speaker 1: I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline.
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  Speaker 4: And this episode was inspired by an article posted over
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  Speaker 4: on NPR's website from their podcast The Hidden Brain, hosted.
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  Speaker 1: By our favorite, our favorite.
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  Speaker 3: Shagar Vedantam.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, and it was about the so called mothers of gynecology.
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  Speaker 4: And we're going to spend the next forty five minutes
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  Speaker 4: talking about them. So I will just hop forward and
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  Speaker 4: say that I posted the article on the Stuff I've
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  Speaker 4: Never Told You Facebook page and the response was overwhelming.
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  Speaker 1: Were people not aware of that history?
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  Speaker 4: No, they weren't. I mean I wasn't either. That was
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  Speaker 4: one of the reasons why I wanted to share it
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  Speaker 4: with people. And so of course we knew with that
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  Speaker 4: kind of response that we needed to take the time
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  Speaker 4: and dedicate a whole podcast to Jay Marion Sims who's
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  Speaker 4: known as the father of kynecology, but the women he
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  Speaker 4: experimentally operated on that essentially allowed him to make all
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  Speaker 4: of these scientific breakthroughs that we do benefit from in
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  Speaker 4: our obgui n's offices today.
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  Speaker 5: Right, And we're gonna talk a lot about Jay Marion
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  Speaker 5: Simms himself, not at the exclusion of these women, but
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  Speaker 5: almost I guess you could say that we're looking at
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  Speaker 5: these women through a Jay Marion Sims lens simply because
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  Speaker 5: the fact that he was a white doctor with a
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  Speaker 5: degree of fame, there's obviously a lot of.
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  Speaker 1: Information they're about him.
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  Speaker 5: And because the women he operated on were enslaved black women.
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  Speaker 5: We don't have records of these women's voices, and so
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  Speaker 5: we have to do our part to dive in and
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  Speaker 5: sort of excavate this history so that we are aware
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  Speaker 5: of this pretty brutal history of early gynecology.
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  Speaker 4: And it also hearkens the social media hashtag say her Name.
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  Speaker 4: You know, this is like the nineteenth century version of that,
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  Speaker 4: where most of the women's names were lost to history.
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  Speaker 4: But we do know the names of three Anarka, Betsy,
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  Speaker 4: and Lucy. And knowing those names and saying those names
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  Speaker 4: as we're going to is also important for filling in
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  Speaker 4: these gaps in our history.
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  Speaker 5: Right because it makes it more real when you realize
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  Speaker 5: that these women, they weren't just nameless, faceless black women.
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  Speaker 5: These were real, live women who were already experiencing so
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  Speaker 5: much and trauma, as we'll talk about. And then we're
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  Speaker 5: part of experimental therapeutic surgery.
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  Speaker 3: So let's get down to old J. Marion Sims.
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  Speaker 4: He was a physician from Alabama, and from eighteen forty
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  Speaker 4: five to eighteen forty nine, like we said, he performed
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  Speaker 4: these experimental surgeries on enslaved women to repair something called
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  Speaker 4: a vesicovaginal fistula, which holds between the bladder and the vagina,
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  Speaker 4: or holds between the rectum and the vagina that can
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  Speaker 4: result from traumatic childbirth.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 5: And so because of the pretty impressive for the time
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  Speaker 5: advancements that he created and championed and the.
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  Speaker 1: Lives that he subsequently saved.
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  Speaker 5: As Kristen said, he's hailed as the father of gynecology
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  Speaker 5: and the founder of modern surgical gynecology. And I mean,
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  Speaker 5: this guy has statues all over the place in his
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  Speaker 5: honor in South Carolina, which is his home state, Alabama,
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  Speaker 5: where he established his medical practice and made all of
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  Speaker 5: those fistula treatment discoveries, and New York, which is where
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  Speaker 5: he later established and ran a booming women's hospital.
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  Speaker 4: Although it's a women's hospital that I think exclusively serviced
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  Speaker 4: white patients.
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  Speaker 5: Oh yeah, yes, it was pretty much for Irish women basically.
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  Speaker 4: So it was really starting in the sixties and seventies
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  Speaker 4: with the rise of a civil rights movement and the
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  Speaker 4: women's rights movements that historians and physicians began looking back
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  Speaker 4: at Sims and wondered, like, wait a second, does.
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  Speaker 3: He deserve these statues?
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  Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, he accomplished things, but do the ends
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  Speaker 4: justify the means in his case? Right?
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  Speaker 5: And so we want to dive in today to the
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  Speaker 5: full story of who he was, what he did, and
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  Speaker 5: who were the women that he performed these repeated, painful
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  Speaker 5: experimental surgeries on without anesthesia. So let's look back quickly
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  Speaker 5: at Sim's early years.
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  Speaker 1: What shape this guy?
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  Speaker 5: He was born in eighteen thirteen in Lancaster, South Carolina,
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  Speaker 5: and he was neither of great wealth nor of great brilliance,
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  Speaker 5: and honestly, he just figured he might as well be
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  Speaker 5: a doctor because he was basically like middle class, normal
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  Speaker 5: average dude, but with a good education. So he's like, uh,
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  Speaker 5: I could have been a lawyer. Nah, you know, I
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  Speaker 5: could be a teacher. Uh, I'm not going to make
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  Speaker 5: my fame that way. I guess I'll be a doctor.
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  Speaker 4: He sounds like, you know, kind of the better call
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  Speaker 4: Saul of Gynecology.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, oh, I love that show.
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  Speaker 5: And so he ends up moving to Alabama, though in
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  Speaker 5: eighteen thirty five after two of his first patients, infants
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  Speaker 5: died from a disease causing persistent diarrhea, and he really
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  Speaker 5: lived a pretty uneventful and nearly impoverished first few years
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  Speaker 5: until he and his family moved to Montgomery, and there
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  Speaker 5: he started to make a name for himself. He was
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  Speaker 5: definitely a self promoter. He started bragging about being the
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  Speaker 5: first in the South successfully treat club feet and crossed eyes.
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  Speaker 5: But as a country doctor, he was also paid to
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  Speaker 5: treat sick and injured slaves on plantations.
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  Speaker 4: And the plantation owners would be heavily interested in providing
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  Speaker 4: this kind of treatment because sick or injured slaves can't work,
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  Speaker 4: and also sick and injured enslaved women can't give birth,
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  Speaker 4: thus it's a profit loss for these slave owners. And
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  Speaker 4: then one day one of these slave owners sends along
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  Speaker 4: to Jay Mary and Sims to women Betsy and seventeen
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  Speaker 4: year old a Narca, both of whom had vesico vaginal fistulas,
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  Speaker 4: but Anarca's the seventeen year old's case was extremely bad
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  Speaker 4: because she had had a protracted labor, causing holes from
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  Speaker 4: her vagina to her bladder and rectum. And she was
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  Speaker 4: also the first case of this that he'd ever seen,
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  Speaker 4: and he'd assisted the doctor with her delivery.
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  Speaker 3: And at first Sims was.
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  Speaker 4: Like, uh, I don't know if.
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  Speaker 3: I can help in this case. What am I gonna do?
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  Speaker 3: I'm better call Saul of you know, ye old gynecology.
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  Speaker 4: Gynecology isn't even really a thing yet how could I help?
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  Speaker 5: Well, yeah, but just like Jimmy in Better Call Saul,
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  Speaker 5: he figured out a way to help. But the whole
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  Speaker 5: reason that he's like, I don't know if I can
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  Speaker 5: help these ladies, You've got to look at the context
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  Speaker 5: of the time.
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  Speaker 1: There had been no cure for this stuff. So before we.
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  Speaker 5: Get into how Sims pivoted to gynecology from his general practice,
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  Speaker 5: you have to understand the context of vesica vaginal fistulus
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  Speaker 5: because it is horrific. So we've already hinted at the
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  Speaker 5: fact that they are caused by prolonged and obstructed labor. Basically,
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  Speaker 5: what happens is when the fetus won't fit through the
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  Speaker 5: birth canal. I hope no one's eating, by the way,
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  Speaker 5: because this is brutal. Well.
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  Speaker 1: I literally when I was reading this.
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  Speaker 5: Christian because what I've included in our notes today is
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  Speaker 5: not anywhere near the full picture. I just hit the
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  Speaker 5: high points because I literally got lightheaded reading about this. Yeah,
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  Speaker 5: graphic details ahead from Yeah, there's like mentions of like
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  Speaker 5: bone plates grinding. I left that out, Okay, So basically,
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  Speaker 5: the fetus won't fit through the birth canal and gets
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  Speaker 5: wedged with each contraction.
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  Speaker 1: It is wedged harder and harder.
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  Speaker 5: Eventually you get massive crush injuries because of this wedging
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  Speaker 5: to the soft tissue of the pelvis, and the blood
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  Speaker 5: supply gets cut off.
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  Speaker 1: The fetus suffocates days later, days later.
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  Speaker 5: Because of where we are in our scientific and medical
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  Speaker 5: history at this point, the fetus, having been left where
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  Speaker 5: it is, it finally slides out, as does dead tissue
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  Speaker 5: from the woman's injured pelvis that is secreted, and once
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  Speaker 5: that's secreted, a fistilliforms. The woman then experiences a complete
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  Speaker 5: loss of urinary and in a woman like a narcist case,
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  Speaker 5: sometimes fecal control, often in addition to horrific side effects
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  Speaker 5: like secondary infertility, complete loss of vaginal function, recurring infections,
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  Speaker 5: and you also have to take the mental health effects
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  Speaker 5: of this into account. One of the huge effects, whether
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  Speaker 5: it's a woman today experiencing it or a woman in
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  Speaker 5: the nineteenth century, is depression because not only have you
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  Speaker 5: lost a child and experienced super traumatic pain, but the
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  Speaker 5: fact that you are constantly experiencing urinary and fecal loss,
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  Speaker 5: you end up being an outcast. You face huge stigma
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  Speaker 5: because you can't control your bowels, you can't control your
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  Speaker 5: bladder and you smell, which then of course contributes to
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  Speaker 5: a loss of dignity and self esteem. And some of
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  Speaker 5: these women did end up killing themselves because of this condition,
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  Speaker 5: and so it was a huge deal for women at
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  Speaker 5: this time.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it was completely debilitating, to the point
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  Speaker 4: that in study that we were reading, one of the
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  Speaker 4: only things really that some of these women could do
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  Speaker 4: would be to essentially sit on a chamber pot, because
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  Speaker 4: I mean, they couldn't really go anywhere. They were constantly
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  Speaker 4: ruining their clothes. I mean, they couldn't do anything. And
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  Speaker 4: we should note that this is still officials are still
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  Speaker 4: a major healthcare issue for a lot of women in
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  Speaker 4: developing nations too. But back to the nineteenth century, this
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  Speaker 4: wasn't uncommon at all, partially because of.
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  Speaker 3: Lackluster maternity care.
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  Speaker 4: But like you said, it was catastrophic, and in eighteen
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  Speaker 4: forty seven, a French surgeon reported the medical community hadn't.
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  Speaker 3: Heard of a single case where a.
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  Speaker 4: Woman was successfully treated, and physicians were quite aware of
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  Speaker 4: the debilitating effects of this condition.
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  Speaker 5: An eighteen fifty seven report that was delivered at the
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  Speaker 5: Georgia State Medical Society included the description that most of
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  Speaker 5: the other physical evils of life sink into utter insignificance
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  Speaker 5: because of the constant pain and mental trauma that the
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  Speaker 5: woman has to experience. And so it's against this backdrop
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  Speaker 5: you have a physician with no real reputation to speak of,
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  Speaker 5: and you've got this terrible common condition with no cure,
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  Speaker 5: that Sims ends up pivoting to gynecology. He's going out
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  Speaker 5: in his rounds. One day, he's on his horse. He's
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  Speaker 5: going out to treat people all over the region, and
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  Speaker 5: he gets word of a middle aged white woman named
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  Speaker 5: missus Meryll who'd been thrown from her horse.
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  Speaker 1: She'd experienced an injury. He needed to come right away
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  Speaker 1: in treater.
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  Speaker 5: So Sims goes to take care of her and realizes
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  Speaker 5: that Meryl has sustained a pelvic injury and her uterus.
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  Speaker 3: Is out of place.
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  Speaker 5: And now at this point, obviously he hadn't yet started
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  Speaker 5: his focus on gynecological issues. And in his autobiography, which
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  Speaker 5: I ended up really getting sucked into because did I
• 13:02
  Speaker 5: mention he was a self promoter, it's a really interesting
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  Speaker 5: time capsule of a read.
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  Speaker 1: He wrote.
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  Speaker 5: If there was anything I hated, it was investigating the
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  Speaker 5: organs of the female pelvis. But this poor woman was
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  Speaker 5: in such a condition that I was obliged to find
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  Speaker 5: out what was the matter with her? How chivalrous, so nice,
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  Speaker 5: so nice, and find out he did.
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  Speaker 4: So what Simms did was have Missus Merrill squat on
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  Speaker 4: her bed under a sheet her modesty, and he inserted
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  Speaker 4: two fingers into her vagina, and by doing that he
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  Speaker 4: was able to reposition the uterus and she immediately experienced relief.
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  Speaker 4: And Caroline, I don't quick aside reading that, Like, I
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  Speaker 4: didn't know.
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  Speaker 3: It was so easy to reposition a uterus.
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  Speaker 5: Well, apparently there's lots of pushing and pulling involved, okay,
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  Speaker 5: And there was something about the position that helped introduce
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  Speaker 5: air into the vaginal canal, so like you get puffed.
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  Speaker 1: Up like a balloon.
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  Speaker 5: And I say this because literally, in his autobiography he
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  Speaker 5: describes how she massively queafed when she then lay down
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  Speaker 5: on the bed. And I'm not even saying that as
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  Speaker 5: like a I'm literally saying that.
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  Speaker 1: This was his Eureka moment. A quif A quif proved
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  Speaker 1: to be a Eureka moment.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, So thanks too, Missus Merrill and her therapeutic queef
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  Speaker 4: Jay Marian sims that, you know what, maybe this similar
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  Speaker 4: positioning that gave him that kind of access to the
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  Speaker 4: uterus could be helpful to treat Betsy in an arca.
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  Speaker 4: So he then bought and bent a silver spoon with
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  Speaker 4: his mind, like in the matrix, not really. He bent
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  Speaker 4: the silver spoon, which was kind of like a a
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  Speaker 4: prototype or a speculum, and brings Betsy in to examine her,
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  Speaker 4: and he said, quote, I saw everything as no man
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  Speaker 4: had ever seen before.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 5: I mean just when you're down there as a tourist,
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  Speaker 5: you typically don't see quite as much. But he with
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  Speaker 5: his prototype speculum, clearly saw the outline of Betsy's fistula
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  Speaker 5: and was like, it just looks like a tear and
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  Speaker 5: some fabric. Why can't why can't we fix that? And
• 15:34
  Speaker 5: years later he would write again questionable, I thought only
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  Speaker 5: of relieving the loveliest of God's creation of one of
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  Speaker 5: the most loathsome maladies that can possibly befall poor human nature.
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  Speaker 5: I felt that I'd had a mission of divine origin.
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  Speaker 5: I could not have ceased my labors if I had tried.
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  Speaker 5: And I'm like, okay, let's think about the context of
• 15:57
  Speaker 5: the time again, right, because we can never forget context.
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  Speaker 1: This is meant.
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  Speaker 5: This is a white slave owner from the South dealing
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  Speaker 5: with enslaved women who were traumatized by childbirth and pain.
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  Speaker 5: And he previously was like ew lady parts, and suddenly
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  Speaker 5: he's talking about the loveliest of God's creatures, and he
• 16:16
  Speaker 5: had no motivation beyond helping the loveliest of God's creatures.
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  Speaker 3: I am making my most skeptical face right now.
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  Speaker 5: She sure is, I mean, because that's quite a change
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  Speaker 5: from his earlier position. So anyway, through all of these
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  Speaker 5: Eureka moments, Sims ends up writing to slave owners around
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  Speaker 5: the region to find cases of previously ignored or untreated
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  Speaker 5: vesico vaginal fistulas.
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  Speaker 4: So at one point he writes to the man who
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  Speaker 4: technically owned a Narka and Betsy, said, if you will
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  Speaker 4: give me Anarka and Betsy for experiment, I agree to
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  Speaker 4: perform no experiment or operation on either of them to
• 16:58
  Speaker 4: endanger their lives, and will not charge a cent for
• 17:01
  Speaker 4: keeping them, but you must pay their taxes and clothe them.
• 17:05
  Speaker 4: I will keep them at my expense. Oh, just the
• 17:09
  Speaker 4: language of bodies's properties is overwhelming, and essentially what he
• 17:14
  Speaker 4: did was rent Anarca and.
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  Speaker 1: Betsy and like twelve other women too.
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: I'm it's it's hard to fathom, honestly. So he paid
• 17:26
  Speaker 4: taxes on them for the years that he was essentially
• 17:30
  Speaker 4: renting them, but he did complain about how it was
• 17:33
  Speaker 4: an enormous tax for a young doctor in a country practice.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, get it, get out of your doctor sims.
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  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean it really, it really would be the
• 17:43
  Speaker 5: same as someone complaining about property taxes.
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  Speaker 1: For him, that was that was the tone it took.
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  Speaker 5: And so anyway, within three months of reaching out to
• 17:51
  Speaker 5: all of these slave owners, he had started his experimental
• 17:54
  Speaker 5: therapeutic surgeries on Betsy Anarka and several other women at
• 17:59
  Speaker 5: this small house Spittle that he had built behind his
• 18:01
  Speaker 5: house for this specific purpose. And one of those first
• 18:05
  Speaker 5: operations was on a woman named Lucy, who also had
• 18:08
  Speaker 5: a really bad case of fistula. Part of her bladder
• 18:11
  Speaker 5: was entirely gone, and when the man who owned Lucy
• 18:16
  Speaker 5: sent her two Sims, he really wasn't sure again that
• 18:19
  Speaker 5: he could help.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: He wrote, she was very.
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  Speaker 5: Much disappointed for her condition was loathsome and she was
• 18:25
  Speaker 5: in hopes that she could be cured. And during her
• 18:29
  Speaker 5: surgery he said that was before the days of anesthetics,
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  Speaker 5: he wrote, and the poor girl on her knees bore
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  Speaker 5: the operation with great heroism and bravery. I succeeded in
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  Speaker 5: closing the fistula in about an hour's time, which was
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  Speaker 5: considered to be very good work. Vanessa Northington Gamble, who's
• 18:46
  Speaker 5: a doctor in medical historian at George Washington University.
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  Speaker 1: Has some quibbles.
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  Speaker 5: She writes, or she told shankra Vedantam in that Hidden
• 18:53
  Speaker 5: Brain piece, listen, this was very painful, and ye would
• 19:00
  Speaker 5: Sims would go on to say that Lucy felt as
• 19:04
  Speaker 5: if she were going to die, and that she cried
• 19:06
  Speaker 5: out in pain so much because of these surgeries. And
• 19:08
  Speaker 5: it's like, well, obviously this is insanely painful and with
• 19:12
  Speaker 5: no anesthesia. I mean, I can't imagine. It makes me
• 19:15
  Speaker 5: like go pale just thinking about it. And it speaks
• 19:20
  Speaker 5: to Sims's quote speaks to something that we will address
• 19:23
  Speaker 5: more as we go through this episode. But it speaks
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  Speaker 5: to the assumption that black women could sustain more pain
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  Speaker 5: than delicate, flower white ladies. And so there was just
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  Speaker 5: this assumption that he held, as did pretty much every
• 19:40
  Speaker 5: other physician in the country at the time, that like, Oh,
• 19:43
  Speaker 5: it's okay, they'll just like grin and bear it when
• 19:45
  Speaker 5: we expose them to so much pain.
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  Speaker 4: But of course, Sims didn't come up with a magical
• 19:54
  Speaker 4: cure overnight or in like that hour that he claims
• 19:57
  Speaker 4: it took to operate.
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: On life Lucy.
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: There were endless failures and repeated surgeries again let us
• 20:04
  Speaker 4: emphasize without any anesthesia.
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: And he writes about how.
• 20:09
  Speaker 4: At last I performed operations only with the assistance of
• 20:13
  Speaker 4: the patients himself, basically saying like all of his doctor
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: friends were just tired of being there and watching him
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: try and fail.
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: And ps let's keep.
• 20:23
  Speaker 4: In mind too that these women were completely naked and
• 20:27
  Speaker 4: exposed while this group of white male doctors would be
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: watching them.
• 20:33
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, after years of watching and assisting with
• 20:36
  Speaker 5: these surgeries, these even these fellow doctors.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: Were like I'm out, Like I can't, I can't do
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: this anymore.
• 20:41
  Speaker 5: And so Sims did train these enslaved women as his
• 20:45
  Speaker 5: surgical assistance, and they helped him operate on their fellow patients.
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: And he gets to it.
• 20:51
  Speaker 5: Sims gets to a point where he pauses for a
• 20:54
  Speaker 5: couple of weeks because he's so disheartened.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: By all of these failures.
• 20:57
  Speaker 5: Again it's all about him, and so he's really mulling
• 21:01
  Speaker 5: over how to better suture these fishillas.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: And he reports that in the.
• 21:06
  Speaker 5: Meantime, and this is something you will see in any
• 21:09
  Speaker 5: source about Sims, he reports that the women were quote
• 21:13
  Speaker 5: clamorous for him to get back to it. And on
• 21:15
  Speaker 5: the one hand, I feel like that is used to
• 21:18
  Speaker 5: justify a lot of brutality and awfulness and experimentation. But
• 21:23
  Speaker 5: on the other hand, like, yeah, I mean, if you
• 21:26
  Speaker 5: were suffering and here's this person who's like, I'm going
• 21:28
  Speaker 5: to cure you, I'd probably be like, hey, TikTok, can
• 21:30
  Speaker 5: we get back to it? So there you know, again
• 21:33
  Speaker 5: there are layers to it. But he ends up one
• 21:36
  Speaker 5: night getting the idea for a new technique. He tries
• 21:40
  Speaker 5: it on Lucy but it fails to Then he finally
• 21:44
  Speaker 5: gets the idea to use a fine silver thread once
• 21:47
  Speaker 5: he realized that the unsterilized silk thread that he was.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: Using was part of the problem.
• 21:51
  Speaker 5: It was causing infections, and he had read about a
• 21:54
  Speaker 5: Virginia surgeon who had used lead sutures. So in spring
• 21:59
  Speaker 5: eighteen forty, he tries his new method on a narka.
• 22:03
  Speaker 5: And it's worth mentioning that this was a Narca's thirtieth
• 22:09
  Speaker 5: unanesthetized surgery. Fortunately for everyone involved, it worked beautifully. She
• 22:17
  Speaker 5: healed really well, and two weeks later Betsy's and Lucy's
• 22:20
  Speaker 5: fistulas had healed and closed as well with this new technique.
• 22:24
  Speaker 4: And the thing is, I mean, if Jay Mary and
• 22:26
  Speaker 4: Simms were a doctor today, he would be all over
• 22:31
  Speaker 4: social media.
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: He would be live tweeting all of this stuff.
• 22:34
  Speaker 4: I mean, the guy was so driven by self promotion,
• 22:38
  Speaker 4: even to the point you could argue of like self branding,
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: because he wanted to revolutionize medicine. I mean, he specifically
• 22:46
  Speaker 4: took on these cases because he wanted to get that
• 22:49
  Speaker 4: kind of fame.
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: And this was something that Jeffrey S.
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: Sartin wrote about in two thousand and four in the
• 22:54
  Speaker 4: Southern Medical Journal about how you know. Sims even said
• 22:59
  Speaker 4: I had made perhaps as one of the most important
• 23:01
  Speaker 4: discoveries of the age for the relief of suffering humanity.
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: And in a way he's right. I mean, it was
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: a massive breakthrough.
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: But there's that question of was he actually concerned with
• 23:13
  Speaker 4: the health and safety of anarca? Betsy Lucy and the
• 23:17
  Speaker 4: other women that he experimentally operated on, or were they,
• 23:21
  Speaker 4: as doctor Graham J. Barker Benfield would argue in the
• 23:25
  Speaker 4: nineteen seventies, just guinea pigs to advance this white dude's career,
• 23:31
  Speaker 4: because there's no evidence that he ever followed up with
• 23:33
  Speaker 4: the women and no data about the rest of the women.
• 23:37
  Speaker 4: And Sean Cravedantam says on Hidden Brain quote he wanted
• 23:42
  Speaker 4: to be a trailblazing researcher, and these women, their bodies
• 23:46
  Speaker 4: became props in his journey of scientific discovery.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
• 23:52
  Speaker 5: So on the one hand, we get incredibly valuable medical
• 23:57
  Speaker 5: advancements that will go on to change the lives of
• 24:00
  Speaker 5: callous women, but it's done on the back, so to speak,
• 24:05
  Speaker 5: of enslaved women who essentially were at their width end,
• 24:09
  Speaker 5: who had no other options available to them.
• 24:11
  Speaker 4: And of course there's a lot more to this story
• 24:13
  Speaker 4: that we're going to talk about when we come right
• 24:15
  Speaker 4: back from a quick break.
• 24:21
  Speaker 5: So, Kristin, I finally got my act together and went
• 24:25
  Speaker 5: and used square space to.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: Build the Caroline Oven Hub on the Internet.
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: Oh I'm so excited.
• 24:32
  Speaker 5: Yes, I built a website finally and it was super
• 24:35
  Speaker 5: easy and I knew that using squarespace with all of
• 24:38
  Speaker 5: its amazing templates would be super easy, but it was
• 24:41
  Speaker 5: even more smooth sailing than I expected. And at first
• 24:45
  Speaker 5: I wasn't sure what template to pick because there are
• 24:47
  Speaker 5: a lot of great ones to choose from. I was
• 24:49
  Speaker 5: able to sort of mix and match and mess around
• 24:51
  Speaker 5: with the whole shebang until I figured out what worked
• 24:54
  Speaker 5: best for me. And I'm really happy with it, and
• 24:56
  Speaker 5: you love it.
• 24:57
  Speaker 6: I do love it.
• 24:58
  Speaker 5: Oh again, It's like I said, it's just pictures of
• 25:01
  Speaker 5: Corgis and ties wonderful.
• 25:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah, well, listeners, if you want to do what Carolyn
• 25:06
  Speaker 4: and I have done and build your website, because who
• 25:08
  Speaker 4: doesn't need a website these days? Sure you need to
• 25:11
  Speaker 4: head over to squarespace dot com and if you use
• 25:14
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• 25:18
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• 25:24
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• 25:26
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• 25:30
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• 25:33
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• 25:38
  Speaker 1: And now back to the show.
• 25:46
  Speaker 4: So at eighteen fifty three, Jamiary and Sims packs up
• 25:49
  Speaker 4: his bag and his family, and it's like, see you later, South.
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: I'm heading to New New York City.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: New York City.
• 25:58
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and he immediately sets about establishing a mixed reputation,
• 26:04
  Speaker 5: as you would assume with somebody like this, like, oh good,
• 26:08
  Speaker 5: you're a really good doctor, but you're kind of a
• 26:10
  Speaker 5: douche so okay. Some historians and critics have suggested that
• 26:17
  Speaker 5: Sims left the South, not because, as he claimed, I'm
• 26:20
  Speaker 5: so sick, like I need to find a better climate
• 26:23
  Speaker 5: that suits my health better, but because of criticism over
• 26:27
  Speaker 5: quote immoral slave experiments, and as he was getting set
• 26:32
  Speaker 5: up in New York, he it is telling that he
• 26:35
  Speaker 5: omitted some pretty important details of records of those groundbreaking
• 26:39
  Speaker 5: Southern surgeries. In both a paper on the topic and
• 26:43
  Speaker 5: a lecture he delivered, he referred to the women as
• 26:46
  Speaker 5: quote healthy young Negro women, leaving out the whole slave
• 26:50
  Speaker 5: bit and leaving out.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: The whole part that no, they were not healthy, they were.
• 26:54
  Speaker 5: Desperate and also enslaved, and adding insult to injury. The
• 26:59
  Speaker 5: early illustrations accompanying his writing about the topic show the
• 27:02
  Speaker 5: patients as white.
• 27:04
  Speaker 4: Talk about some revisionist history. So in eighteen fifty five.
• 27:09
  Speaker 4: Just two years later, the Women's Hospital is established, and
• 27:13
  Speaker 4: it's a public and privately funded charity hospital exclusively for
• 27:17
  Speaker 4: quote female disorders.
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: I mean in this from the dude who was so
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: like ugh Lady Pelvis's.
• 27:25
  Speaker 4: And Sims earns fame through the hospital which did primarily
• 27:28
  Speaker 4: treat Irish immigrant women.
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: But again he got the rumormill going with questions.
• 27:34
  Speaker 4: About these experiments on these often destitute immigrant women and
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: whether they were happening with informed consent going.
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: On right exactly.
• 27:46
  Speaker 5: And during the Civil War he actually travels to Europe
• 27:50
  Speaker 5: to get out of the country and in eighteen sixty
• 27:53
  Speaker 5: three treats Empress Eugenie, wife of Napoleon the Third, for
• 27:58
  Speaker 5: a fistula, and she, by the way, he performed the
• 28:03
  Speaker 5: surgery on her while she was under chloroform, so she
• 28:07
  Speaker 5: was anesthetized. And again sort of getting to that mixed
• 28:12
  Speaker 5: reputation in the early post war period, although he had
• 28:15
  Speaker 5: owned slaves, he had defended the system of slavery.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: And written many a poor word.
• 28:20
  Speaker 5: About black people in letters to colleagues. He urged the
• 28:24
  Speaker 5: South after the Civil War to accept the fifteenth Amendment
• 28:27
  Speaker 5: and just move on. I really am getting the impression
• 28:30
  Speaker 5: that this guy, like it's not that he necessarily.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: Has principles right, oh god, It's not.
• 28:35
  Speaker 5: Like he sticks by like the awful system of slavery
• 28:38
  Speaker 5: or you know, wholeheartedly sticks by the freedom of the slaves.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: He's just like, can we just like whatever?
• 28:45
  Speaker 5: You know, Like he's not genuinely supporting the women that
• 28:49
  Speaker 5: he performed surgeries on. It's more like, I don't know,
• 28:52
  Speaker 5: can I just get a better reputation out of this stuff?
• 28:54
  Speaker 5: He's literally only looking out for himself and any like qualms,
• 28:58
  Speaker 5: quipples and arguments about freeing the slaves first of all
• 29:02
  Speaker 5: and then giving them voting rights.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: He was just like, I don't care. You guys are
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: like really bugging me with all of this.
• 29:07
  Speaker 4: How is this helping me at the end of the
• 29:09
  Speaker 4: day exactly? And I mean because of this, like people
• 29:13
  Speaker 4: really did not like Jay Mary and Sims the dude
• 29:16
  Speaker 4: slash the douche. And by the way, Quick Smanty's side
• 29:19
  Speaker 4: note use of douche as a pejorative is totally validated because,
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: as we know from the episode Bag, the douche douche
• 29:29
  Speaker 4: is a horrible concoction that women were tricked into, you know,
• 29:34
  Speaker 4: inserting into their vaginal canals.
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: So it is an accurate description in a lot of ways.
• 29:39
  Speaker 5: Yeah, of this guy, he's a terrible thing that was
• 29:42
  Speaker 5: in women's vaginas.
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: So true, he's the ultimate douche.
• 29:47
  Speaker 4: So nonetheless, his book Clinical Notes on Uterine Surgery was
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: widely read, and it took a straightforward approach to women's
• 29:57
  Speaker 4: health and gynecological disorders.
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: And the books and phasis.
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: On sterrility treatment, particularly artificial insemination, was way ahead of
• 30:06
  Speaker 4: its time.
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's great.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: And then he totally MUCKs it up again.
• 30:10
  Speaker 5: And this is actually an interesting sminty side note for
• 30:13
  Speaker 5: those of you who listened to our episode on the
• 30:15
  Speaker 5: Marmorian Flock, the group of lady sculptors in Rome in
• 30:19
  Speaker 5: the nineteenth century.
• 30:21
  Speaker 6: Uh.
• 30:22
  Speaker 5: In eighteen seventy, the douche published a newspaper account of
• 30:27
  Speaker 5: his treatment of famous actress Charlotte Cushman. And now Cushman
• 30:32
  Speaker 5: was one of the primary patrons and benefactors.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: Of these sculptor ladies.
• 30:40
  Speaker 5: Uh. But seriously, like a doctor publishing like, hey, guys,
• 30:43
  Speaker 5: I treated this famous lady. The New York Academy of
• 30:47
  Speaker 5: Medicine immediately was like, are you kidding me? They reprimanded
• 30:51
  Speaker 5: him formally for resorting to paid advertising and hello, breaking confidentiality.
• 30:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean this guy totally again, Like I'm just
• 30:58
  Speaker 4: imagining how all he would be on Twitter, like, hey guys,
• 31:02
  Speaker 4: Jen Anniston just left my office hashtag winning.
• 31:07
  Speaker 5: And so in this decade of the eighteen seventies, you
• 31:11
  Speaker 5: have colleagues and the hospital board lobbing charges of unethical
• 31:14
  Speaker 5: experimentation at him.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: And there's some like.
• 31:17
  Speaker 5: Awful and dismissive quote of his that I neglected to
• 31:20
  Speaker 5: include in the notes. But he's basically like the ladies,
• 31:23
  Speaker 5: meaning the hospital board.
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: He's like the ladies are at it again. Yeah, he
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: was just he was a joy.
• 31:30
  Speaker 5: In eighteen seventy six, hooray, he performs the first documented
• 31:33
  Speaker 5: gallbladder surgery.
• 31:34
  Speaker 4: I'm getting frustrated with his string of successes, like that's great,
• 31:40
  Speaker 4: first gallbladder surgery, yay.
• 31:41
  Speaker 5: But he also at the same time promoted now discredited
• 31:46
  Speaker 5: techniques like ovarian removal for various physical and psychosomatic conditions
• 31:51
  Speaker 5: termed hysterical diseases.
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: Anah, there we go.
• 31:53
  Speaker 6: They all floating uterusm.
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: So I mean, already I'm annoyed that he has any statues.
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: Take this at all?
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, he was clearly no saint.
• 32:15
  Speaker 5: But what we want to get into is like, was
• 32:19
  Speaker 5: he evil? Capital eevil?
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: Has he been misrepresented? Is he simply a product of
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: his time?
• 32:24
  Speaker 4: Like?
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: What do we know about that?
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 32:26
  Speaker 4: I mean, like do does his do his personal views
• 32:30
  Speaker 4: and the way that he was able to make those
• 32:33
  Speaker 4: scientific discoveries? Does that discredit essentially those scientific discoveries?
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: You know what I mean? Like, does it literally knock
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: him off that pedestal?
• 32:43
  Speaker 4: And this is something that critics and supporters have argued
• 32:47
  Speaker 4: over because there's the argument that enslaved people could not
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: truly grant consent in the way we think of it today,
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: even if they fully understood the procedures and were indeed clamorous.
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: To be treated.
• 33:04
  Speaker 4: But they were a vulnerable population, no bones about it.
• 33:07
  Speaker 4: They were subject to the whims and wishes of the
• 33:09
  Speaker 4: people who owned them and rented them, in Sims's case,
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: like property, and who wanted to fix them not so
• 33:17
  Speaker 4: that they could be healthy and have a better quality
• 33:20
  Speaker 4: of life, but so that they could be put back
• 33:23
  Speaker 4: to work.
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: Right, Because you know, you have to keep in mind
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: that during the system of slavery, black women couldn't pop
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: out enough babies.
• 33:36
  Speaker 5: And once slavery is over, then you shift into black
• 33:40
  Speaker 5: people are having too many babies, as we will discuss
• 33:43
  Speaker 5: in our next episode. But yeah, I mean, they were
• 33:47
  Speaker 5: absolutely property. They were not human beings, whether it was
• 33:50
  Speaker 5: a doctor or a slave owner. And so if these
• 33:53
  Speaker 5: women desperate for relief were owned by Sims or on
• 33:59
  Speaker 5: some weird love, and could they have raised objections if
• 34:03
  Speaker 5: he did, in an arcist case, for instance, need to
• 34:06
  Speaker 5: operate thirty times. I mean, we'll never know because we
• 34:09
  Speaker 5: don't have records of these women's voices. They might have
• 34:12
  Speaker 5: wanted help, but it doesn't mean that they wanted the
• 34:16
  Speaker 5: degree of pain and suffering that they were exposed to
• 34:19
  Speaker 5: in repeated experimental surgeries. But you've got gynecologist and Sims
• 34:25
  Speaker 5: explainer slash apologists, depending on how you sm l. Lewis Walls,
• 34:30
  Speaker 5: who argues he's living today, he's a modern gynecologist. As
• 34:35
  Speaker 5: Sims did in his autobiography, that some treatment was better
• 34:39
  Speaker 5: than no treatment. Right, The women quote had only two
• 34:42
  Speaker 5: therapeutic choices, Walls rites. They could continue as they were
• 34:46
  Speaker 5: with whatever palliad of treatment might be provided, or they
• 34:48
  Speaker 5: could agree to undergo experimental surgical operations. That might offer
• 34:52
  Speaker 5: them some relief, perhaps even a total cure for their condition.
• 34:55
  Speaker 5: And Walls, who nowadays treats women in Appa with vesica
• 35:01
  Speaker 5: vaginal fistulas, says that these women are desperate for a
• 35:05
  Speaker 5: cure and will willingly submit to almost any therapy proposed
• 35:08
  Speaker 5: to them. And to that into several other things that
• 35:11
  Speaker 5: Walls says in the paper that we read that he wrote,
• 35:15
  Speaker 5: I have to say, does the modern perspective on vesica
• 35:20
  Speaker 5: vaginal fistula patients does it justify as Walls seems to
• 35:25
  Speaker 5: argue Sims's treatment of them. It seems to he seems
• 35:29
  Speaker 5: to argue that like you, guys, why are you making.
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: Stuff up about how awful he was?
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: And that like like.
• 35:38
  Speaker 5: You said, Kristin, I mean, yes, he made these amazing
• 35:40
  Speaker 5: discoveries that would help so many women, especially post advent
• 35:45
  Speaker 5: of anesthesia.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: But were the means a justification for the ends?
• 35:50
  Speaker 5: And can Walls, with his experience, however, firsthand, can he
• 35:55
  Speaker 5: justify the things that Sims did?
• 35:57
  Speaker 4: I mean?
• 35:57
  Speaker 5: Walls also argues that Sims wrote about discussing the procedures
• 36:01
  Speaker 5: with patients and receiving their consent to undergo the procedures,
• 36:06
  Speaker 5: and he says that you basically have to assume that
• 36:09
  Speaker 5: these women cooperated because he's like, think about how delicate
• 36:13
  Speaker 5: these procedures were. If the women were forced into it,
• 36:15
  Speaker 5: you know, and they were thrashing around like trying to
• 36:18
  Speaker 5: get away, they would be even more injured.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: And it's like, well can ha ah, Like I don't
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: know how you can.
• 36:25
  Speaker 5: Yes, they're absolutely delicate surgeries obviously, and you obviously don't
• 36:30
  Speaker 5: want to be moving around and like thrashing about when
• 36:34
  Speaker 5: someone's got a scalpel and some sutures in your vaginal canal.
• 36:39
  Speaker 5: But can you seriously make the argument that like, oh, yeah,
• 36:42
  Speaker 5: they were like totally.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: Down for everything he was doing well, because I mean.
• 36:45
  Speaker 4: If they were to protest, then they could be punished,
• 36:49
  Speaker 4: you know, they could face a different kind of physical pain.
• 36:53
  Speaker 4: So it's a sketchy argument at best. And yeah, this
• 36:56
  Speaker 4: whole like machiavellian like medicine is it is honestly tough
• 37:03
  Speaker 4: to unravel because of the benefits, yes, that.
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: We do enjoy today as you.
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: Know, people who you know undergo modern obg U I
• 37:15
  Speaker 4: N treatments, you know, but you still have, of course,
• 37:19
  Speaker 4: like to that point, people like historian Harriet Washington, who
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: underscores the pain that these women went through the torment,
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: and if anything, it is a horrifying lesson in us
• 37:35
  Speaker 4: not taking medical advancements, for granted, the medical advancements to
• 37:40
  Speaker 4: treat the female body.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
• 37:43
  Speaker 5: And we've mentioned anesthesia a hundred times already, and the
• 37:47
  Speaker 5: fact that these women were not under anesthesia when they
• 37:49
  Speaker 5: underwent these procedures.
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: And so what is the deal?
• 37:53
  Speaker 5: Is he some cruel, sadistic racist who purposely withheld anesthesia?
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: I mean probably.
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: Honestly, not a great guy.
• 38:03
  Speaker 5: But the answer, of course, as with all of this,
• 38:05
  Speaker 5: is it's not that simple. So Sims began his surgeries
• 38:09
  Speaker 5: on these enslaved women a year before anesthesia was successfully
• 38:12
  Speaker 5: demonstrated for the first time. Because you've got like, for
• 38:14
  Speaker 5: one hundred years doctors experimenting with different types of experimental
• 38:20
  Speaker 5: anesthetics but no success. Then in October of eighteen forty six,
• 38:25
  Speaker 5: you get dentist William T. Morton administering an effective anesthetics
• 38:30
  Speaker 5: sulfuric ether, to a patient having a tumor in.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: His neck removed.
• 38:34
  Speaker 5: And although like around this time, you'd had a bunch
• 38:37
  Speaker 5: of other people who'd been testing new ideas and methods.
• 38:40
  Speaker 5: Morton really revolutionized it with his delivery system, which helped
• 38:43
  Speaker 5: control how much ether a patient inhaled during the procedure,
• 38:46
  Speaker 5: which meant, hello, your patient wouldn't ode.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: And it basically gave birth to the field of anesthesiology.
• 38:53
  Speaker 5: But even so, the use of anesthesia, though it spread rapidly,
• 38:58
  Speaker 5: was still not accepted universally.
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: There were still all.
• 39:02
  Speaker 5: Sorts of weird like you shouldn't be put under because
• 39:05
  Speaker 5: like you might die, but also like you need to
• 39:08
  Speaker 5: feel the pain and like stay alert.
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: Well, And I don't know where this Morton dentist was located,
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: but I would also be curious to.
• 39:18
  Speaker 4: Know how long it would take news of that successful
• 39:21
  Speaker 4: anesthesia to reach nineteenth century Montgomery, Alabama.
• 39:27
  Speaker 5: Sure exactly, Yeah, I mean even proponents of using anesthesia
• 39:32
  Speaker 5: weren't sure that all patients needed it, and this was
• 39:34
  Speaker 5: definitely the case unfortunately with doctors men treating people with
• 39:40
  Speaker 5: vesico vaginal fistulas women. Writing in eighteen fifty nine, for instance,
• 39:45
  Speaker 5: Sir James Young Simpson, who had discovered chloroform, wrote, the
• 39:50
  Speaker 5: mere amount of pain endured by the patient is perhaps
• 39:53
  Speaker 5: less than in most surgical operations, as the walls of
• 39:55
  Speaker 5: the vesico vaginal septum are far less sensitive than you
• 39:58
  Speaker 5: would a prioria.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: Are you kidding me?
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: Men?
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: Seriously? Sorry, I'm like ramped up here.
• 40:06
  Speaker 5: And Simpson's words actually echoed Sim's words that he had
• 40:11
  Speaker 5: given during a New York lecture in eighteen fifty seven,
• 40:13
  Speaker 5: during a time btw that he was exclusively treating white women,
• 40:17
  Speaker 5: some of higher classes at his hospital. He said that, oh, yeah,
• 40:21
  Speaker 5: I never use anesthesia during fistula operations quote, because they
• 40:25
  Speaker 5: are not painful enough.
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: To justify the trouble.
• 40:29
  Speaker 5: And risk attending their administration. Plus, he'd written about a
• 40:34
  Speaker 5: white woman that he'd treated back in eighteen forty nine
• 40:36
  Speaker 5: on whom he hadn't used anesthesia either.
• 40:39
  Speaker 4: And I would bet though, that that woman would have
• 40:42
  Speaker 4: been working class, lower class, because class definitely plays a
• 40:47
  Speaker 4: role if you are a white woman, and whether or
• 40:50
  Speaker 4: not you would receive any of this old school anesthesia.
• 40:54
  Speaker 4: Because there was this idea and Sims totally bought into
• 40:57
  Speaker 4: it that upper class white women were simply too fragile
• 41:01
  Speaker 4: and couldn't tolerate surgery without ether. And this also is
• 41:06
  Speaker 4: around the time when we start seeing doctors first advocating
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: for cesareans rather than vaginal deliveries because of the same
• 41:16
  Speaker 4: idea that these they were called.
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: Bookish at the time.
• 41:19
  Speaker 4: These bookish, wealthy women just did not have it in
• 41:22
  Speaker 4: them like a working class a tough working class woman
• 41:25
  Speaker 4: did to deliver. So it was the same kind of
• 41:29
  Speaker 4: thinking extended to anesthesia.
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: And then, of course, though, if you.
• 41:34
  Speaker 4: Are a woman of color, you are not going to
• 41:36
  Speaker 4: get anesthesia, regardless of how much money you have, probably
• 41:40
  Speaker 4: because of this racist notion that Sims actually wrote about
• 41:45
  Speaker 4: that black women have a quote.
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: Naturally high pain tolerance.
• 41:51
  Speaker 4: In eighteen ninety two, for instance, we have American neurologists
• 41:55
  Speaker 4: Silas Weir Mitchell writing, oh God, and this this quote. Oh,
• 42:01
  Speaker 4: I don't even want to quote it. The savage does
• 42:04
  Speaker 4: not feel pain as we do. So this includes people
• 42:10
  Speaker 4: of color, people also from Jewish and Irish Irish ancestry,
• 42:15
  Speaker 4: also Native Americans and people from Southern Europe. You were,
• 42:19
  Speaker 4: they were all believed to have a higher pain tolerance
• 42:22
  Speaker 4: slash an inferior awareness of pain.
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: This wasn't like some kind of superpower.
• 42:27
  Speaker 4: Obviously, this was a sign that they were poorly bred.
• 42:32
  Speaker 5: Yeah, but the horrifying paradox is that you've got all
• 42:34
  Speaker 5: these white doctors then, who accuse people of color and
• 42:37
  Speaker 5: people of lower classes of overreacting to pain, acting foolish
• 42:43
  Speaker 5: in the operating room. But it's like, no, I think,
• 42:46
  Speaker 5: I think that's a false What is that a false truth?
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: What false logic?
• 42:50
  Speaker 4: That?
• 42:50
  Speaker 6: Like?
• 42:50
  Speaker 5: Oh you think that, like, oh, you can't feel pain
• 42:53
  Speaker 5: as much, So look at you overreacting, you foolish person.
• 42:56
  Speaker 5: Shouldn't it be like, oh, no, they're human and so
• 42:59
  Speaker 5: they feel pain just like any other human and they're
• 43:02
  Speaker 5: reacting appropriately.
• 43:04
  Speaker 4: And it wouldn't be until the nineteen forties that doctors
• 43:09
  Speaker 4: started to even just question this race based idea of pain,
• 43:14
  Speaker 4: but that racist residue remained and remained the But going
• 43:20
  Speaker 4: back a few decades, a nineteen eighty one study from
• 43:23
  Speaker 4: Hawaii found that white surgery patients were likelier to be
• 43:27
  Speaker 4: given analgesics compared to Filipino, Japanese, or Chinese patients, in
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: part because of those old school stereotypes about how different
• 43:36
  Speaker 4: ethnic groups respond to pain. And if we look at
• 43:40
  Speaker 4: a more recent study from two thousand and two, this
• 43:44
  Speaker 4: landmark research found that patients of color again were less
• 43:48
  Speaker 4: likely to receive the same quality of care as white patients,
• 43:51
  Speaker 4: even when both groups had similar insurance or the same
• 43:55
  Speaker 4: ability to pay for care.
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: And oh, it's still with us, It's still with us.
• 44:01
  Speaker 5: Yeah, because a study in January of twenty sixteen found
• 44:04
  Speaker 5: that black patients are more likely to die in the
• 44:07
  Speaker 5: ICU than white patients, and the researchers.
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: Tied this to the fact that the.
• 44:13
  Speaker 5: Doctors literally paid less attention. They displayed less empathy to
• 44:21
  Speaker 5: patients of color than they did to white patients. They
• 44:23
  Speaker 5: were more likely to physically approach and touch and comfort
• 44:28
  Speaker 5: and soothe the white patients, whereas when they were dealing
• 44:32
  Speaker 5: with the black patients, they tended to stand at a distance,
• 44:35
  Speaker 5: hold a notebook in front of them, not offer as
• 44:37
  Speaker 5: many comforting words.
• 44:39
  Speaker 4: And we should note that the study authors point out
• 44:42
  Speaker 4: that since most of the doctors most but not all
• 44:46
  Speaker 4: of the doctors in that study were white, it was
• 44:50
  Speaker 4: hard to tell whether the quality of care would have
• 44:54
  Speaker 4: been better if they had been, say, doctors of color.
• 44:57
  Speaker 4: But they also note that previous research found that there
• 45:00
  Speaker 4: does tend to be better doctor patient rapport when both
• 45:05
  Speaker 4: share the same ethnicity.
• 45:06
  Speaker 5: Yeah, And I mean, you've got plenty of previous research
• 45:09
  Speaker 5: that's shown that up to two thirds of doctors do
• 45:13
  Speaker 5: display unconscious racial bias, so nothing like calling people names
• 45:18
  Speaker 5: or like actively trying to treat them poorly. But it's
• 45:24
  Speaker 5: bad enough that black patients can pick up on it.
• 45:27
  Speaker 4: And Caroline and reading about a discrimination that kind of
• 45:31
  Speaker 4: like unconscious racial bias that a lot of women of
• 45:34
  Speaker 4: color face when they go to the doctor. There was
• 45:37
  Speaker 4: an anecdote from one African American woman saying.
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: Whenever I have to go to the doctor, like.
• 45:43
  Speaker 4: If it's something unscheduled, I make sure I dress well
• 45:47
  Speaker 4: so that I will be taken more seriously.
• 45:49
  Speaker 5: Yeah, because studies have shown that there's a higher likelihood
• 45:53
  Speaker 5: that healthcare professionals will assume that people of color are
• 45:57
  Speaker 5: exhibiting drug seeking behavior and that they are just lying
• 46:00
  Speaker 5: about their pain to get pills. Basically I mean and
• 46:04
  Speaker 5: speaking of pain, there was a fascinating and horrifying at
• 46:07
  Speaker 5: the same time Boston Globe article from June of twenty
• 46:10
  Speaker 5: fourteen that looked at pain and the way that it
• 46:14
  Speaker 5: registers and is treated, and they found that in experiments,
• 46:18
  Speaker 5: both women and people of color in general have frequently
• 46:22
  Speaker 5: shown lower pain tolerance when asked to do things like
• 46:25
  Speaker 5: hold their hands in ice water during experiments, which of
• 46:29
  Speaker 5: course goes against the person of color aspect, goes against
• 46:34
  Speaker 5: all of those racist assumptions from the nineteenth century that we've.
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: Been talking about.
• 46:39
  Speaker 5: And when they're looking at gender specifically, researchers have found
• 46:42
  Speaker 5: that our different pain tolerances emerged during puberty, and women
• 46:46
  Speaker 5: end up more susceptible to things like migraines, back pain,
• 46:49
  Speaker 5: and fibromyalgia. And there've been all of these studies that
• 46:52
  Speaker 5: show that heart surgery patients, if you're a man, you're
• 46:57
  Speaker 5: more likely to get pain meds, and if you're.
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: A woman, you're more likely to get it sedatives, which
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: ties into the whole continuing assumption.
• 47:04
  Speaker 4: About hysteria and considering how chronic pain conditions tend to
• 47:09
  Speaker 4: affect more women than men.
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: There's also this issue of doctors having to.
• 47:15
  Speaker 4: Be convinced to give them the right kind and the
• 47:20
  Speaker 4: enough of their pain relievers. And if we look at
• 47:25
  Speaker 4: socioeconomics too, researchers found that low income Americans are likely
• 47:30
  Speaker 4: to suffer pain compared to their high income.
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: Peers, probably due to correlates with manual labor, unhealthy.
• 47:39
  Speaker 4: Diets, and not being able to afford going to the doctor.
• 47:44
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and so you're starting to see percolating to the surface,
• 47:49
  Speaker 5: really just echoes of everything that we talked about in
• 47:51
  Speaker 5: Sim's day. You're seeing people being taken less seriously, pain
• 47:55
  Speaker 5: being taken less seriously because it's in a woman or
• 47:58
  Speaker 5: someone of a lower soci economic class, or someone of color.
• 48:02
  Speaker 5: And speaking of race and ethnicity, among pain patients, black
• 48:08
  Speaker 5: people and Hispanic people are likelier to report that their
• 48:11
  Speaker 5: pain is severe, and black women are much likelier, for instance,
• 48:14
  Speaker 5: to die from breast cancer. Black women are hyper overrepresented
• 48:19
  Speaker 5: in breast cancer patients, but they are more likely also
• 48:24
  Speaker 5: to die of it, hyper overrepresented in the sense of
• 48:27
  Speaker 5: population proportion. So we also find that black pain patients
• 48:33
  Speaker 5: are less likely overall compared to white patients to receive
• 48:36
  Speaker 5: pain medication, and when they do.
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: Receive it, they receive less of it.
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: And studies of post.
• 48:41
  Speaker 4: Top care have repeatedly found that white patients receive higher
• 48:46
  Speaker 4: doses of opioids than patients of color.
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: Right, And so what's going on?
• 48:52
  Speaker 5: I mean the researchers talk about conscious and unconscious bias,
• 48:55
  Speaker 5: but also docs assumptions about patient's insurance and payments, so
• 49:00
  Speaker 5: you know, like racism, racist assumptions basically there's also, though weird,
• 49:06
  Speaker 5: internalized ideas about pain. A University of Virginia professor Sophie
• 49:11
  Speaker 5: Trey Walter in twenty twelve asked people to think about
• 49:14
  Speaker 5: pain in certain situations and then show them pictures of
• 49:17
  Speaker 5: a black or a white person and asked the participant
• 49:21
  Speaker 5: how much pain the person in the picture was in
• 49:23
  Speaker 5: Both white and black participants rated black patients pain as
• 49:27
  Speaker 5: less severe in A related study found that this pain
• 49:33
  Speaker 5: bias that's tied to black or white patients emerges as
• 49:39
  Speaker 5: early as.
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: Seven and tree.
• 49:42
  Speaker 4: Walter attributes this kind of benevolent racism to the belief
• 49:48
  Speaker 4: that black people have harder lives and that hardship leads
• 49:54
  Speaker 4: to toughness, and this also leads us to the trope
• 49:57
  Speaker 4: of you know, the strong black woman, which can be
• 50:01
  Speaker 4: very harmful as well because of all of these very
• 50:03
  Speaker 4: practical issues of literally like you know, doctors assuming like, well,
• 50:08
  Speaker 4: you don't need as much uh pain treatment, but also
• 50:12
  Speaker 4: just those those racist ideologies too that give us, you know,
• 50:19
  Speaker 4: kind of quote unquote permission to maybe not consider their
• 50:23
  Speaker 4: needs as much because it's like, oh, well, you know,
• 50:26
  Speaker 4: they're so strong or so to have they been through
• 50:27
  Speaker 4: so much, so even I guess physical pain.
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: Can also be withstood to a stronger degree.
• 50:35
  Speaker 5: Again, echoes of the way that people were thinking about
• 50:39
  Speaker 5: enslaved people in this country, like oh, they're tough, they're fine.
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: But then again, like those people were literally viewed with property.
• 50:45
  Speaker 3: Well, and speaking of which I mean this.
• 50:49
  Speaker 4: Chapter of gynecology, early gynecological history is part of a
• 50:56
  Speaker 4: broader legacy of people of color really being used as
• 51:02
  Speaker 4: guinea pigs for a lot of medical experimentation that has
• 51:06
  Speaker 4: gone on in the United States. Todd Sabat, for instance,
• 51:10
  Speaker 4: who's a medical historian at East Carolina University, told BuzzFeed
• 51:14
  Speaker 4: News quote, medicine is an integral part of the story
• 51:18
  Speaker 4: of slavery. And this is something that had Henriette Washington
• 51:22
  Speaker 4: writes about in her book Medical Apartheid, that we referenced
• 51:26
  Speaker 4: in our podcast a while back now on Henrietta Lax,
• 51:30
  Speaker 4: who died from cervical cancer but without her family's consent,
• 51:36
  Speaker 4: cells were taken from her, I guess, from her cervix
• 51:41
  Speaker 4: and they infinitely reproduce these HeLa cells as they're known today.
• 51:47
  Speaker 4: And thanks to these HeLa cells, there have been all
• 51:49
  Speaker 4: sorts of medical breakthroughs that have resulted.
• 51:53
  Speaker 3: But the family you know of Henriette.
• 51:56
  Speaker 4: Lax rightfully feels so wronged by this because again it's
• 52:02
  Speaker 4: like bodies just being used as property.
• 52:04
  Speaker 5: Right, Yeah, as shankra Vedantam said, just props for someone
• 52:09
  Speaker 5: else's advancement.
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: And again it's.
• 52:12
  Speaker 5: The same thing with Sims of like you know, researchers
• 52:16
  Speaker 5: and physicians have been able to make incredible discoveries based
• 52:19
  Speaker 5: on stolen cells from this woman who was not informed
• 52:25
  Speaker 5: and who later died and her family who was never informed.
• 52:28
  Speaker 4: And it's also I mean, these issues also are not
• 52:31
  Speaker 4: exclusive to the bodies of women of color. I mean,
• 52:35
  Speaker 4: you have the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis study that was initiated
• 52:39
  Speaker 4: in nineteen thirty two, which deliberately infected four hundred black
• 52:44
  Speaker 4: men with syphilis. If we go back to eighteen fifty five,
• 52:49
  Speaker 4: around the same time that Jay Mary and Sims is
• 52:53
  Speaker 4: building his women's hospital, you have John fed Brown, who
• 52:57
  Speaker 4: was an escape slave. Recall that the doctor to whom
• 53:02
  Speaker 4: he was indentured would produce painful blisters on his body
• 53:06
  Speaker 4: in order to observe quote how deep.
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: My black skin went.
• 53:11
  Speaker 4: And then if we want some more horrifying examples, we
• 53:14
  Speaker 4: also have in the fifties, black Fluoridians being deliberately exposed
• 53:19
  Speaker 4: to swarms of mosquitoes carrying yellow fever and other diseases,
• 53:23
  Speaker 4: and experiments conducted by the Army and the CIA. And
• 53:29
  Speaker 4: finally we have in the sixties and seventies. And I
• 53:31
  Speaker 4: say finally, just as this is the end of my list,
• 53:34
  Speaker 4: this is not the end of these instances. But in
• 53:38
  Speaker 4: the sixties and seventies you have African American boys being
• 53:42
  Speaker 4: subjected to sometimes paralyzing neurosurgery by researcher at the University
• 53:47
  Speaker 4: of Mississippi who believed that brain pathology could be the
• 53:51
  Speaker 4: root of children's hyperactive behavior.
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: So the subjects he chose black boys.
• 53:58
  Speaker 5: Right, And so this country, I mean, we have an
• 54:03
  Speaker 5: undeniable history of racist medical developments.
• 54:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, And the thing is we can't go
• 54:11
  Speaker 4: back in time and change it. And a solution obviously
• 54:14
  Speaker 4: is not okay, all of those procedures out the door.
• 54:18
  Speaker 4: You know, if we were to retire every single medical
• 54:21
  Speaker 4: procedure that traces back to either a recent or distant
• 54:26
  Speaker 4: past racist experimentation or ideology, I.
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: Mean, hospitals would just collapse in on themselves. Probably.
• 54:36
  Speaker 4: So what do we do in that case, I mean,
• 54:38
  Speaker 4: what do we do in the cases of Lucy, Betsy
• 54:42
  Speaker 4: an Arca and the other women who are really the
• 54:46
  Speaker 4: mothers of gynecology.
• 54:48
  Speaker 5: Well, Victoria Gamble, who we cited earlier, had the suggestion
• 54:52
  Speaker 5: of memorializing them through their own statues. If Sims has three,
• 54:58
  Speaker 5: why don't these three women have any? And so she
• 55:02
  Speaker 5: says that, you know, the statues would not be based
• 55:05
  Speaker 5: on the experiments that they were subjected to, because we
• 55:08
  Speaker 5: shouldn't think of them just as victims. She says, it
• 55:11
  Speaker 5: might be with the three of them together, or it
• 55:13
  Speaker 5: might be withholding their children, because they were mothers and
• 55:16
  Speaker 5: they were women, so that would be part of it.
• 55:19
  Speaker 5: So it would not be she says, they're prostrate on
• 55:22
  Speaker 5: the altar of science. And then she says, I think
• 55:26
  Speaker 5: what the inscription would say is Betsy, A. Narka and
• 55:29
  Speaker 5: Lucy the mothers of modern gynecology.
• 55:33
  Speaker 3: And I think that that statue should happen. How do
• 55:35
  Speaker 3: we build a statue? Carolin? Do you like kickstart that? I?
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's like the only thing that I can think.
• 55:41
  Speaker 3: Of is that.
• 55:42
  Speaker 4: I'm sure some listener who works for the government knows
• 55:46
  Speaker 4: how you get a statue directed because I mean, can
• 55:50
  Speaker 4: we start like a campaign.
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure we could.
• 55:52
  Speaker 5: And you know, I think there's an interesting point about
• 55:55
  Speaker 5: sims of statues. A lot of people have argued for
• 55:57
  Speaker 5: them to come down. But there was one anecdote, and
• 56:00
  Speaker 5: I'm so sorry I can't remember who it was, if
• 56:02
  Speaker 5: it was Gamble or if it was another researcher, but
• 56:06
  Speaker 5: she said that she had initially supported taking all of
• 56:09
  Speaker 5: the Sims statues down until she took a tour of
• 56:14
  Speaker 5: basically the slave trade in Liverpool in the UK, and
• 56:19
  Speaker 5: there was this statue of Neptune with two black boys
• 56:26
  Speaker 5: basically in chains at the base of the statue, and
• 56:29
  Speaker 5: people had been arguing for that to come down, and
• 56:32
  Speaker 5: the black man who was leading the tour said, well,
• 56:35
  Speaker 5: I don't think it should because if this statue comes down,
• 56:39
  Speaker 5: people will forget, people will not talk about it anymore
• 56:44
  Speaker 5: because they will not see this visible reminder of the
• 56:46
  Speaker 5: horrors that happened right here in this city. And so
• 56:51
  Speaker 5: I think that argument could also be applied to Sims.
• 56:55
  Speaker 5: It would be nice to maybe see on the plaques
• 56:57
  Speaker 5: by his statues, maybe an asterisk explaining that, while yes,
• 57:03
  Speaker 5: he did develop some.
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: Incredible life changing procedures.
• 57:07
  Speaker 5: He did it at the expense of women who basically
• 57:12
  Speaker 5: had no choice.
• 57:14
  Speaker 4: So listeners, we now want to know what you think
• 57:17
  Speaker 4: about all of this. A. Do you know how we
• 57:19
  Speaker 4: can get a statue built? B have you Are you
• 57:24
  Speaker 4: a patient of color who has ever experienced this kind
• 57:26
  Speaker 4: of discrimination in the doctor's office. We want to hear
• 57:30
  Speaker 4: your stories because obviously this is yes history that we've
• 57:35
  Speaker 4: been talking about, but it is.
• 57:36
  Speaker 3: History that lives on today.
• 57:39
  Speaker 4: So mom Stuff at housetuffworks dot com is our email address.
• 57:42
  Speaker 4: You can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or
• 57:45
  Speaker 4: messages on Facebook.
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: And we've got a couple of messages to share with
• 57:48
  Speaker 3: you right now.
• 57:59
  Speaker 5: I've got a letter here from another Christian in response
• 58:02
  Speaker 5: to our colorism episode. She says, you mentioned a study
• 58:07
  Speaker 5: that stated how the dark skinned black women who were
• 58:09
  Speaker 5: surveyed all said that they had at some point wanted
• 58:11
  Speaker 5: to be lighter skinned, but the light skinned black women
• 58:14
  Speaker 5: surveyed had never wanted to be darker. This reminded me
• 58:17
  Speaker 5: of something I used to do in my childhood, a
• 58:20
  Speaker 5: very light skinned Mexican American girl. I would purposely try
• 58:23
  Speaker 5: to stay out in the sun as long as I could,
• 58:25
  Speaker 5: wanting to become dark like my sisters, most of my
• 58:28
  Speaker 5: family members, and the group of Mexican kids at my school.
• 58:32
  Speaker 5: I would even take sun tanloation and rub it all
• 58:34
  Speaker 5: over myself and then go lie out in the sun.
• 58:36
  Speaker 5: I remember that, even at a young age, I was
• 58:38
  Speaker 5: conscious that darker skinned Mexicans were perceived as more authentically Mexican,
• 58:43
  Speaker 5: and that my light skin, combounded with the fact that
• 58:45
  Speaker 5: I wasn't taught Spanish, made it more difficult for me
• 58:48
  Speaker 5: to gain acceptance in Mexican social groups and even within
• 58:51
  Speaker 5: my own family, in which only my mother, grandmother, and
• 58:54
  Speaker 5: I are light. Don't get me wrong, I definitely know
• 58:57
  Speaker 5: my privilege as a light skinned Mexican and have seen
• 59:00
  Speaker 5: firsthand how, for example, my father's dark skin has made
• 59:03
  Speaker 5: him a target for random searches, being followed around department stores,
• 59:08
  Speaker 5: being asked for receipts upon leaving a store, and even
• 59:10
  Speaker 5: having racial slurs hurled in him from moving cars. I
• 59:14
  Speaker 5: know without a doubt that I moved through life differently
• 59:16
  Speaker 5: than he does, and that our skin colors impact our
• 59:18
  Speaker 5: daily lives. In fact, my mom once told me that
• 59:21
  Speaker 5: instead of focusing on radio journalism, I should go into
• 59:24
  Speaker 5: TV news as it would be easy for me to
• 59:26
  Speaker 5: get a job since as a Latina I would be
• 59:28
  Speaker 5: a diversity higher but that I looked quote white enough
• 59:32
  Speaker 5: to not be perceived as threatening to the status quo
• 59:34
  Speaker 5: a happy medium for everyone. Even now at twenty seven,
• 59:38
  Speaker 5: I struggle with feeling authentically connected to my Mexican heritage
• 59:41
  Speaker 5: due to my light skin, but I try to remember
• 59:43
  Speaker 5: that authentic Mexicans come in all shades, from white to
• 59:46
  Speaker 5: black and everything in between. Thanks for these thought and
• 59:49
  Speaker 5: memory of provoking podcasts.
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: And thank you Kristin.
• 59:52
  Speaker 4: So I've got a letter hear from Chinwei also about
• 59:55
  Speaker 4: our colorism episode, and Hinwi writes, I was going to
• 59:59
  Speaker 4: skip this particul episode, but I'm glad I listened to
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 4: the end. As a dark skinned woman, I'm kind of
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 4: tired of everyone telling me how bad my life should be,
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 4: how hard I must have it, and how I most
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 4: certainly hate myself.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: I've never experienced those things.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 4: Not sure what luck prevented me from not having that
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 4: particular experience, but I'm very grateful for it. I struggle
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 4: between trying not to have my experience erased and trying
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 4: to support any relief exposure of colorism can bring to
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 4: those impacted by it. I know it must have been
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 4: difficult for two white women to speak about this, so
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 4: I applaud your efforts. I do think there's so much
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 4: nuance missed when.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 3: You don't have personal experience to draw on, and I.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 4: Think this episode could have been made slightly better from
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 4: first hand accounts.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 3: And for the record, Chinway totally agree with you there.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 4: As a black, non African American woman, I want to
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 4: give particular credit to African American women for continuing.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: To push this conversation worldwide.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 4: I think there's been a lot of progress on this issue,
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 4: a lot of regnition of our biases and active in
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 4: individual steps to combat it as well.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 3: And there's still more to do.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 4: But I truly believe my darker tone nieces and nephews
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 4: will grow up in a different society than the.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 3: One my peers experienced.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 4: Thanks for the attempt, Shinwe well, thank you for sharing
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 4: your personal experiences with us, because I mean, I think,
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 4: as we said in that podcast, we wanted to hear
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 4: first hand accounts because you're absolutely right to white skinned
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 4: women cannot firsthand relate to this, So keep the conversation going.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 3: Friends, Mom.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 4: Stuff at house stuffworks dot com is where you can
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 4: send your letters and for links to all of our
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 4: social media as well as all of our blogs, videos
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 4: and podcasts with our sources. If you want to learn
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 4: more about the mothers of gynecology, head on over to
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 4: stuff Mom Never Told You dot com.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 3: Thanks for more on this and thousands of other topics,
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 3: visit housetuffworks dot
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 4: Com called exampled example m